Here on the American Great Lakes the 1000’s of shipwrecks are supposed be protected by US and I believe Canadian law. The bad news is that large areas of the lakes are relatively shallow and accessible to unscrupulous divers.
The wreckage of my current modeling project, the Great Lakes Steamship Benjamin Noble (build log on SOS) lies in 300ft of water off Lake Superior’s North Shore. It is, therefore fortunately, accessible only to experienced technical divers. If something goes wrong there are no decompression facilities near by. The guys who found it have been deliberately vague about its exact location and used a $10,000 prize posted by a local magazine publisher to finance the preparation of the documentation for registration with the National Register of Historic places. But, it’s a huge lake and the Coast Guard can’t be everywhere at once.
Her wreckage is also the grave of the 20 or so crewmen who went down with her.
Roger