Protection of the underwater cultural heritage. Draft principles and guidelines for implementation of article 303 of the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea, 1982

This article falls into three parts. In the first part, an explanation is given of the assumptions made by the writer in preparing it as a discussion paper for presentation at the National Maritime Museum Conference in January 1996.1 The second part is concerned with the form of principles and guidelines and reviews a range of models which are available and the fora in which they may be processed. The final part contains a draft of the principles and guidelines, together with a brief commentary.