The study, protection and preservation of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) allow better appreciation of past culture, history and science. It can also help us understand past responses to climate change and rising sea levels. However, with marine industrialisation and environmental degradation UCH is under intense threat. Adopted in 2001, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage urges States to take all appropriate measures to protect underwater heritage. What can Learning from the Past do to help ensure that UCH is fully included in broader ocean stewardship programmes aligned with the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development particularly Goal 14, “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”
When we talk about underwater cultural heritage, shipwrecks are often the first things that come to mind. It’s certainly true that such remains can capture the imagination. Ranging from iconic sites such as the RMS Titanic to sites that reveal astonishing evidence of technological ability in the ancient world – such as the Antikythera mechanism. Other wrecks tell us about the people that sailed on these vessels – for example, the Mary Rose with its rich evidence of the diversity of a Tudor shipboard community. Wrecks also serve as war graves – potent and sombre memorials to past conflict, for example the USS Arizona. New capabilities for deep water exploration have both revealed astonishing survival of ancient seacraft in locations such as the Black Sea and have also raised fears of increased commercial salvage activity that might cause loss of historical evidence. However, for every wreck that is known and documented, many more await discovery with potential evidence of technological change, trade and colonialism. Meanwhile, the inter-tidal zone contains evidence of historic docks and harbours as well as activities such as fishing, shipbuilding, kelp-collection and salt-making among many others.
The full picture of UCH, however, is more expansive and even more fascinating – evidence of submerged prehistoric landscapes and settlements such as Bouldnor Cliff off the Isle of Wight tell us about past sea level rise and how people responded to these changes. Ritual structures have been found on the foreshore offering tantalising evidence of past belief systems. The story of Doggerland now submerged beneath the North Sea, includes a massive tsunami event that played a part in the final separation of what we now know as Great Britain from continental Europe some 8,000 years ago – an early case study of human response to natural disaster. Sea level change has been a crucial factor in determining how modern humans migrated out of Africa and across the globe. The population of Australia seems to have involved an astonishing feat of ancient seafaring. However, this episode also shows how traditional knowledge provides other perspectives – Aboriginal people traditionally believe they have been in Australia since the time of creation – and some consider attempts to argue otherwise as politically motivated.
“White fellas like theorising we come from somewhere else other than Australia to lessen our connection to country. We are from here. Our knowledge of our history is embedded in our blood and our country. Whitefellas knowledge of our history is only as good as their technology.”– Aunty Val Coombs, Quandamooka Elder, 2012
A full picture of UCH recognizes that in some cultures the natural heritage is also cultural heritage. For example, in Japan the Dugong is not only a living natural resource but is also considered cultural heritage. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument on its Mixed Natural and Cultural list in large part because it recognized that the coral that is of outstanding universal value as a natural resources also has deep cosmological and traditional significance in the Native Hawaiian culture. It was recognized as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where the spirits return after death.
Right now, new survey technology and new processing methods such as artificial intelligence are leading to unprecedented amounts of new information about the seabed being available. As a result, much new information about UCH is being revealed. However, as marine industrial activity increases, so threats to this cultural heritage multiply and intensify.
The Lloyd’s Register Foundation Foresight Review of Ocean Safety stresses the need for vastly increased effort around purposeful marine data collection and supports the UN Global Compact sustainable ocean principles call for interventions to stimulate sharing of relevant scientific data. Learning from the Past will collaborate on efforts to improve access to data about UCH. We will also work to set information about UCH alongside other datasets created to assist in management of a safe and sustainable ocean – such as the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Ocean Safety Index programme.
Learning from the Past will contribute to understanding how care for UCH fits into broader risk and environmental management at sea. Various forms of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are widely used internationally to designate in specific locations where activities that might harm the marine environment are limited or excluded. MPAs will be important in managing the expansion of new industries such as offshore renewables; in fact, an array of wind turbines themselves create a form of MPA as they limit access to the adjacent seabed for activities such as trawling, dredging and mining. It is important that UCH be integrated into ocean and coastal management as part of broader marine spatial planning as has been done in the Baltic Sea Region Integrated Management plan but there is much to be done to fully incorporate UCH into such management regimes for our Ocean Heritage (natural and cultural). Equally, some aspects of UCH, such as historic wrecks that still contain polluting cargo or fuel, need to be managed in terms of potential risk to the environment as well as archaeological significance as is being done by the Major Projects Foundation.
On land, the heritage community is accustomed to the notion of landscapes that have heritage value – both tangible and intangible – that merit protection. The same can be true for the ocean. The Middle Passage is the term often used to refer to the experience of enslaved African people as they travelled across the Atlantic to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. This area has immense significance to the ancestors of the enslaved and also contains tangible evidence, in the form of wrecks and the remains of slaves who did not survive brutal treatment on the journey. Those tangible remains may now be under threat from industrial seabed activity. Learning from the Past will contribute to efforts to understand how such important marine landscapes such as the Middle Passage can be memorialised and protected from deep seabed mining, bottom trawling and dredging.
The Learning from the Past programme will highlight actions that can mobilise citizen scientists to assist with care and understanding of UCH; outstanding examples include projects such as CITIZAN and CHERISH and the work of organisations such as SCAPE. There are also well-established schemes that enable volunteer divers to monitor and report on the condition of historic wrecks such as the Nautical Archaeology Society Adopt a Wreck project and the international programme Gathering Information via Recreational and Technical Diving (GIRT).
The Lloyd’s Register Foundation has recognised the significance of the launch of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. To assist with integration of UCH into the UN Ocean Decade the Foundation is supporting the Ocean Decade Heritage Network and the Cultural Heritage Framework Programme (CHFP). The ambition of the network through the CHFP is:
“By the end of the UN Ocean Decade, the historical dimension of people’s relationships with the sea will be integrated within ocean science and policy. The ‘ocean we want’ will be inspired and informed by the long and diverse histories and living heritage of people and the sea.”