IMPACTS OF RECREATIONAL SCUBA DIVING ON SHIP- WRECKS IN AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC A Review

This paper reviews the impacts of recreational scuba diving on the cultural heritage and recreational dive values of ship-wrecks in marine environments in Australia and the western Pacific Ocean, excluding South East Asia. Shipwrecks are unique, fragile, non-renewable cultural resources that are an important element of underwater heritage, and are of great interest to society. Shipwrecks also offer unique, spectacular and fascinating diving experiences and have considerable aesthetic appeal to divers. Four types of diver impacts on shipwrecks were identified: the removal of artefacts as sou-venirs or personal mementos by divers and disturbance to wreck sites associated with this activity; direct contact with wrecks and protective marine growth and concretions by divers and their equipment; exhaled air bubbles trapped inside wrecks from divers penetrating wrecks; and, anchor damage, which is a major threat to wrecks and considered to be more damaging to wrecks than the other impacts of diving. This paper reviews the impacts of recreational scuba diving on the cultural heritage and rec-reational dive values of shipwrecks in marine environments. The study area of the review in-cludes the waters of Australia and the western Pacific Ocean but does not include South Eas