Changes to US Navy Guidelines regarding diving on Military Shipwrecks

Do you dive on shipwrecks that are sunken military ships?  Here is a posting from the Federal Register covering some new guidelines being issued by the US Navy regarding diving on shipwrecks.  It's quite a long article with quite a bit of legalese, and some in the diving industry are grumbling about how vague some of the language is.

I'll leave it up to you to decide for yourselves.  The article is here:

US Navy regualations on Shipwreck diving

Aside from disturbing human remains, which I think is totally wrong and should both be prohibited by law and respected by divers, my opinion is that a ship that's been laying on the bottom of the ocean for 100 years is going to continue to disintegrate until it's no more.  A diver visiting it and even (gasp) grabbing a souvenir like a porthole or a piece of pottery no way harms the wreck, nor would leaving those "treasures" in place cause the ship to be preserved any longer.  Divers taking artifacts makes those artifacts available to the public to see, which is of far greater value then having them rot away on the ocean floor.

What's your opinion?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Thanks for sharing, and DSAO!