good morning my friend: If they refuse to negotiate with those that have spent their limited time of life and money following up rumors here and there of such things on the land and sea, then, as in my case, since I am the only one that actually knows 'of' several of them and their locations, they will effectively disappear when I am gone , so who gains with this attitude?
A simple example of the accelerating destructiveness of nature is that on land it takes years for the first large trees to grow to maturity on a temple, during this period minimal damage is done to the structure, but after, when the tree dies and or is weakend, it will fall when one of the periodic hurricanes hit, or from other causes.
In doing so it generally tears part of the structure away creating more potentially fertile ground for other trees to grow. Over the years this is an accelerating process until eventually 'if' they are 'ever' found and excavated, the value is greatly decreased or gone. For smaller structures this can be disastrous
When I was exploring in the Quintana Roo jungles next to Belize, my friend and I found a small Mayan temple. It was heavily overgrown. It was duly reported Mexico city, but never acknowledged, nor have I ever seen a report of any Archaeological activity in that region. I realize that they have more work than they can handle for the next few hundreds of years, however this accumulative lapse from many sources represents a tremendous amount of lost information.
Since we were operating under visual and compass locations only, I doubt that I can ever find it again. It may be completely destroyed by now.
As for ships, while the main structure remains fairly intact, it offers a form of protection, but as it is gradually destroyed the deterioration of the other archaeological materiel is greatly accelerated until nothing remains visible or is under sand or coral.
This attitude is self destroying and extremely short sighted, the argument that they are being saved for future explorations is facetious since much will no longer remain, so even with superior equipment, there will be nothing left to excavate, or even the knowledge of where the yet unfound and untouched ones are, this information would only come from those wiling to risk their lives and fortunes in a search that might involve years, yet this effort is not recognized or rewarded....
There should be a cooperative factor involved, whereby both the Archaeologist is assured of work, and the hunter a return for his investment and unique knowledge and ability in finding these unknown wrecks.
How many archaeological depts could / would afford either the time or the money in a search such as Mel fisher did ? Can you imagine the lost data if he had not been successful?
Actually every marine Archaeologist should nominate him as their patron Saint, after all, even though he was a treasure hunter, horrors, He sparked the growth of marine Archaeology and guaranteed 'them work'.
Don Jose de La Mancha
p.s. Interesting post Digger, prob lost in sequence of translation. "no negotiation with treasure hunters".
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