"Look and don't touch" - no arguments from me - I don't have the space at home for large bits of non-ferrous metal nor the inclination to spend a dive working with with a hacksaw or hammer getting sub-clinical DCI for a piece of scrap I'd probably step over if I saw it in the street.
However - "don't look - it's illegal" scares me.
I'm allowed, nay encouraged, to visit ancient castles, battlefields and other historic locations on land (even a few graveyards sell tickets and give guided tours to the final resting places of the "famous"), dungeons are thrown open so that tourists can gawk at machines intended to torture people. Yes! - people make a lot of money out of the historic side of war every day of the year - it often seems the more gore the better - and it's called the tourism industry. Every day during the British summer historic sites echo to the footsteps of visitors including bus loads of school children "experiencing" history. I've worked hard to gain the skills that allow me to visit wrecks and see those visits as no different to what non-divers do every day.
Places in GB where people died (military and civilian) during the war get demolished, redeveloped and destroyed as towns and cities expand and needs change. These places include private houses, factories, barracks, airfields, air-raid shelters, hospitals. Each and everyone has it's own history - it may not be headline history but who is to judge what will be important to future generations? Some is preserved but even listed buildings get demolished from time to time.
Don't get me wrong - my diving has got me intensely interested in maritme history and the bravery of those who fought and died so we could be free never ceases to astonish me, not least the 30,000 or so merchant seamen who perished during WWII. I just don't want to see that freedom curtailed by grey men sitting behind closed doors in Whitehall.
What I cannot understand is that soon as the historic site is underwater it seems the rules change. Wrecks which are largely only known about because of the activities of "amateur" divers (up to and including the wreck of the "Mary Rose") most of which have been ignored by "professional" archeologists for decades are now "time capsules". Relatives of those who died are drummed up into a frenzy by a largely uninformed group of politicians who manage to portray the image of divers disturbing their mortal remains
(see
http://www.bsac.org/services/wreckshansard241100.htm) when all that remains is rusting steel and even that will be gone in time.
And all the time the rules tighten.
The reasons given include the fact that a "small minority" of divers are still "desecrating" wrecks. Banning wreck diving for this reason is akin to outlawing cars because of a handful of drunken divers. BTW - If you are some rabid brass collector with a garage full of the stuff can you please stop before you mess it up for all of us?
So its time for divers to make a stand before we are denied the right to dive any wreck around the British Isles. The last time this was a hot topic for politicians in GB they were distracted by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease - this time diving may not be so lucky.
What we need to know is who the grey men are and how they are to be contacted. Anyone know?
As the T-shirts often say "take only memories/photographs - leave only bubbles"
Rant over
Ant S