PROTECTING OUR SUNKEN TREASURE
Our recent feature series on HMAS Dive Sites cast a spotlight on ex-navy vessels that have come out of retirement to perform service as artificial reefs for the benefit of our marine environment and coastal tourism. Although not ‘shipwrecks’ in the traditional sense, they nevertheless form part of our underwater cultural heritage that is covered by new wide-ranging legislation that came into force on 1 July 2019. The changes affect broad sections of the maritime community, both recreational and commercial.
OUR UNDERWATER CULTURAL HERITAGE
“Underwater cultural heritage” is a term of relatively recent origin and has been adopted as the banner for protective legislation recently passed by the Australian Parliament. It is an all-embracing catch phrase that includes any “trace of human existence that has a cultural, historical or archaeological character”, and is wholly or partly under water. Such traces could be vessels, aircraft, amphibious vehicles, structures, artefacts, relics and human remains, together with the natural environment and archaeological context of the site in which they are located.
Under this broad umbrella, there are an estimated 8,000 underwater heritage sites in Australia’s coastal waters. The vast majority are shipwrecks – 7,500 of them – of which over 5,000 have heritage significance for other countries such as the Netherlands, the United
