Recreational diving or sport diving is a type of diving that uses SCUBA equipment for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment. Shipwreck diving for treasure is specialized and takes divers back to a past. Each wreck has its own history waitng to be explored. Standard dive equipment and suba skills is all that is needed to dive shipwrecks for the MOST PART. The reefs in the Florida Keys is a grave yard to the majority of the 1733 Spanish fleet sunk by a hurricane. Most of these shallow wrecks have been slavaged but you can still hunt for ballast stone and maybe uncover a treasue that was left behind. The most famous ship wreck the Nuestra Senora de Atocha sunk in 1622 by a hurricane, uncovered the largest treasure of gold and silver salvaged. Dive operations through out the Keys offer dive expeditions to a number of these treasure ships. You can also plan your own treasure hunt with a chart of all the marked shipwrecks discovered.
As well as enabling professionals to carefully excavate shipwreck sites and recover historic artefacts for the edification of generations to come, Unesco schemes to safeguard Thailand’s submarine cultural heritage will also benefit tourist activities such as scuba-diving, points out Bobby Orillaneda, an academic working for the Underwater Archaeology Section at the National Museum of the Philippines.
“Recreational divers can unintentionally damage or destroy vital evidence, so it’s important for us archaeologists to get to these sites first. After we sift through the findings we can educate divers on how to conduct themselves in these spots and this, I believe, can make the experience a lot more enjoyable for them,” noted Orillaneda, who’s been here on three previous occasions for similar practical training sessions.
