The assumption that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is the legal framework for all activities taking place in the sea - Ocean Sustainability in the 21st Century - page 366

10.5 Regulation in another context
In the case of underwater cultural heritage, where the UNCLOS regime is lacking or is
clearly unsatisfactory, a new instrument of universal scope has been adopted to avoid the
risk of unexpected and undesirable consequences.
The regime provided by the UNCLOS for underwater cultural heritage is fragmentary,
being composed of only two provisions, included in different parts of the Convention,
namely Art. 149 3 (in Part XI, 'The Area') and Art. 303 4 (in Part XVI, 'General provisions').
Moreover, the two provisions are in a conceptual contradiction one with the other. While
Art. 149 is based on assumptions that the heritage must be preserved and used for the benefit
of mankind and that preferential rights are granted to certain states having a link with it,
paragraph 3 of Art. 303 can be interpreted, at least in its English text, as a covert invitation
to the looting of the underwater cultural heritage found on the continental shelf. It gives pri-
ority to 'the law of salvage and other rules of admiralty', that is, to a body of rules that are
intended in some common law countries to provide for the application of a first-come-first-
served or freedom-of-fishing approach for the underwater cultural heritage. This can only
serve the interest of private commercial gain, to the detriment of the public interest in the
study and exhibition of the underwater cultural heritage for public interest. If this is the case,
a state that has a cultural link with certain objects can be deprived of any means of prevent-
ing the pillage of its historical and cultural heritage.
For example, according to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in
the decision rendered on 24 March 1999 in the case R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. v. Haver , the law
of finds means that 'a person who discovers a shipwreck in navigable waters that has been
long lost and abandoned and who reduces the property to actual or constructive possession
becomes the property's owner'. In its turn, the law of salvage gives the salvor a lien (or right
in rem ) over the object.
The Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (CPUCH), ad-
opted on 2 November 2001 within the framework of the UNESCO (United Nations Educa-