Did you read yesterday's article 'bout Spain NOT w

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The researchers now plan to transfer the paper inventory to a database that the Spanish government can share with countries with colonial shipwrecks in their waters. León hopes the information his team has gathered will give those countries what they need to safeguard their maritime heritage against unscrupulous treasure hunters who all too often use salvage permits as a cover for more profitable explorations .

“We have to be very careful about the details and positions of some of the ships,” he says. “But the ministry works with countries that have ratified the 2001 Unesco convention [on the protection of the underwater cultural heritage], so they should be countries that aren’t going to use this information to make deals with treasure-hunting firms. ”

Anyway, he adds, the big treasure-hunting outfits will not be interested in most of the wrecks on the inventory. “It’s true that the big treasure-hunting firms have spent years doing what we’ve been doing, but only when it comes to the ships that carried huge treasure loads. I don’t think we’d be helping them out much, to be honest. ”

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