This is extremely interesting, but reading the article left me wondering: why are experienced underwater archaeologists not involved in this? The only mention o

This is extremely interesting, but reading the article left me wondering: why are experienced underwater archaeologists not involved in this? The only mention of any seems to be DRASSM, French government archaeologists who presumably had to come over at great expense. In the two locations I've lived and dived there have been underwater archaeology societies (Save Our Shipwrecks in Ontario, and the Nautical Archaeology Society in the UK) whose would normally by extremely keen to survey a wreck like this. I'll also point out that if you don't involve people with this training, you can do a lot of harm. Items that have been submerged for a long time, especially in mud, can degrade rapidly once they're brought into air. Archaeologists will typically have prepared baths to submerge items in once they're brought up. There can be a lot of information preserved in those wrecks: for example, one of our best sources of information about English longbows are the examples brought up from the wreck of the Mary Rose. There's one massive red flag in this article that screams "this needs archaeologists involved": the fact that they took the reporter diving to the wreck. It sounds like this was his first dive. As others have pointed out, there is some risk of injury, even if they properly briefed him, since he's going to be too distracted by the wreck to focus on things like "breath continuously". But there's also a lot of risk to the wreck. Even qualified divers have a bad habit of kicking wrecks (and reefs) and doing damage. There's also the fact that the only photograph in that article is take from the surface using a cell phone. I would not say that underwater photography is a priority for me, but even I have the kit to take photos while diving that would be a lot better than those take from the surface. So why don't these guys? Especially in 10 feet of water where the lighting conditions are so benign.