Germany Tries to Curb Baltic Shipwreck Plundering

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Hobby divers and trophy hunters seeking artefacts and 'souvenirs' underwater in the Baltic are damaging a precious maritime legacy stretching back thousands of years. As a reaction to the looting of historically valuable shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea, German archaeologists have started attaching underwater signs drawing attention to the fact that they are protected monuments. There are some 1,500 marine monuments strewn across the seabed along the German coast, including well-preserved shipwrecks, lost cargo, planes (some of which are war-graves) and ancient settlements submerged through subsidence and rising water levels. Some 800 to 900 shipwrecks are known to lie in German Baltic waters, but  only 350 wrecks have been scientifically examined so far. It seems that the threat to this preserved underwater heritage is increasing. Detlef Jantzen, an archaeologist at the regional agency for monument protection in the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania told Spiegel-online:

"We have the impression that tampering with the wrecks has increased in recent years [...] The technical equipment generally available keeps on improving, which means that hobby divers and people who don't have the best intentions are able to reach ever more wrecks." "It's no problem if you just take a look at such monuments without breaking or removing anything but we're seeing that items are being stolen, dismantled and unscrewed, and sometimes they're even using machinery to take things from these wrecks," he adds. "Such trophy hunting is putting the monuments in big danger." 

As on land, theft of objects from shipwrecks designated as monuments is a punishable crime. In many cases however, it seems that divers are causing damage inadvertently because they're not aware that they're doing anything wrong.

Now the Society of Maritime Archaeology, a group of archaeologists and divers with close links to the monument agency, has started a project to attach signs to frequently visited shipwrecks informing divers that the vessels are historic monuments. The signs will show the layout of the wrecks and provide information on their history. The chairman of the group, Martin Siegel, said the aim was to appeal to the conscience of divers and boost awareness that the ships must be preserved for research purposes. [...]  "It's only a small minority of divers who go there to steal objects, mostly it's people who don't know they're dealing with a monument and are inadvertently causing damage," Siegel told Spiegel online. [...] Siegel said the Baltic wrecks are at particular risk because there is pent-up demand to inspect them after recreational diving was forbidden in communist East Germany [...] "The signs are an attempt to get a grip on the tampering problem through information. If they approach a wreck underwater and see that it's a monument, some people will respect that, one hopes." 

David Crossland, 'Germany Tries to Halt Baltic Shipwreck Plundering', Spiegel online 10/17/2012