VICTORIA, Australia (13 June 2007) -- The Victorian government is to seek commonwealth heritage protection for a shipwreck newly discovered in Bass Strait. The Scottish-built cargo vessel SS Alert was discovered on June 3 in deep water between Cape Schanck and the Port Phillip heads by the Southern Ocean Exploration team. The wreck is officially in commonwealth waters. Planning Minister Justin Madden said Heritage Victoria would write to the federal government recommending the wreck be placed in a protected zone making it off-limits to anyone without a heritage permit. "Although the wreck is more than 70 metres down and therefore only accessible to technical divers, we do need to ensure it remains undisturbed," Mr Madden said. Mr Madden said the wreck had already received Victoria's highest level of heritage protection. It is on the Victorian Heritage Register along with every vessel known to have been wrecked or lost off the Victorian coast more than 75 years ago, even if their exact locations are unknown, he said. The SS Alert, only 51 metres long and weighing 247 tonnes, was used to move cargo and passengers between Gippsland and Melbourne in the late 19th century. The vessel was lost in 1893 but divers finally reached it this month, two weeks after detecting it with sonar. The Southern Ocean Exploration team won the 2006 Heritage Council Award for discovering the TSS Kanowna and the SS Queensland shipwrecks in Bass Strait and used the award funding to buy the side-scan sonar, which helped find the latest shipwreck. "I would like to congratulate the Southern Ocean Exploration team, a committed group of volunteers, for this marvellous discovery which is yet another wonderful contribution to our maritime heritage," Mr Madden said. "The Alert and its many associated relics can now be fully explored and documented, which is a fantastic outcome in terms of sharing our maritime heritage with the wider community." It is an offence to disturb, damage or remove items from historic shipwrecks, with penalties of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for individuals and $50,000 for a body corporate. Mr Madden said there were about 700 historic shipwrecks in Victorian waters and only about 30 per cent of those have been found and explored. | | Liars and looters Leigh Bishop and Brad Sheard. Following the lead of dive industry-endorsed shipwreck looters Bishop and Sheard, scuba diving thieves around the world are destroying wrecks for bragging rights, coffee table displays and internet auction profits worth millions but a fraction of the revenue shipwrecks can generate year after year as fully protected underwater museums. FROM THE EDITORS OF CDNN Despite dive industry 'take pictures, leave only bubbles' green-wash, a small but strident group of industry-promoted scuba diving looters steal artifacts from shipwrecks under the guise of 'archaeological exploration', and aggressively compete for bragging rights, product endorsements and profits from the sales of stolen artifacts that are now on a par with those from smuggling humans and drugs. "We do not care about Leigh Bishop and Brad Sheard's personality problems, their hate-mongering web sites, their chat room shenanigans nor their crude attempts to blackmail responsible, eco-friendly dive companies that support full protection of marine wildlife, shipwrecks and underwater war graves," said CDS President Evan T. Allard. "Such unscrupulous conduct is beneath contempt and serves only to substantiate accusations that Bishop and Sheard have committed crimes and will continue to do so unless authorities step in." "The fact is that the vast majority of the global scuba diving community opposes shipwreck looting and underwater grave robbing, and with good reason," Allard added. "For scuba divers, every shipwreck is an underwater museum to be fully protected for our children, our grandchildren and all future generations of divers who will dive deeper and longer thanks to ongoing improvements in diving technology ," Allard said. CYBER DIVER ALERT | If you have information pertaining to the theft and/or sale of wreck artifacts, or desecration of underwater grave sites by Leigh Bishop, Brad Sheard, organized crime gangs or anyone else, please contact CDNN immediately and your information will be passed along to appropriate authorities. REPORT SCUBA LOOTER |
|
|
