The impact of the latest 3D technologies on the documentation of underwater heritage sites

Documenting underwater cultural heritage is a challenging undertaking. Underwater environment is not a man´s natural habitat and special equipment and devices had to be invented so that he could enter and study this environment. Several decades of underwater research and many sacrifices were needed to fully understand the importance of underwater heritage and its protection. The means for accurate documentation underwater are very limited and demanding, due to required technical equipment it is also expensive. Emergence of modern 3D methods and accompanying software tools for processing of 3D data is therefore of utmost importance for documenting and protection of underwater cultural heritage. In comparison to manual and analog methods, 3D methods offer much better accuracy, they substantially shorten the necessary time spent underwater and in this way improve the safety at work as well as lower the entire cost of field work. For illustration of the above development we discuss archeological case studies from the North East Adriatic.