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By Thomas H. Belknap, Jr., Blank Rome LLCThe term ?treasure salvage? has a tendency to conjure romantic images of pirates and adventurers. Not, I might add, of modern day pirates,who are widely acknowledged to be unromantic thugs and scoundrels, but those of the old story books, of whom time and fiction writers have been more forgiving. In the stories, ?x? marks the spot and the hero fol- lows obscure and cryptic clues in a wild adventure to the long-lost chest of gold in the abandoned sunkenshipwreck, keeping it all for himself and living happily ever after. Just to define our term, by treasure salvage we mean the subsea explo- ration and recovery of artifacts from sunken vessels which are believed (or, more often, hoped) to be of historical or monetary significance. Successful treasure salvage has always required mastery of the combined disciplines of historical research and subsea exploration and recovery, and in real life, of course, it has always involved long hours and a lot of disappoint-ment.As in many areas, technology has been the driver of change. Subsea exploration that was impossible justtwenty years ago is now practically routine. Modern satellite positioning capabilities are precise to a degree that was only recently inconceivable. Data analysis and computer modeling capabilities are exponentially more sophisticated and are expanding rap- idly with each passing year. Historical research and information is more widely available and accessible thanks to the internet. Successful treasure salvage, in other words, has become increasingly a product of investment and hard work rather than a game of chance.The result of these changes is that sunken shipwrecks that were once assumed to be lost forever are increas- ingly being found. In addition to the ?rogue? salvors who have traditionally engaged in the treasure salvage busi- ness, sophisticated publicly tradedcompanies have entered the scene in recent years and have applied consid- erable funding and efforts towards seeking out newer and more dramatic discoveries. The discovery of the TITANIC in 1985 and of the side- wheel steamer CENTRAL AMERI-CA in 1987 are good examples of early high-profile discoveries, and more recently Odyssey Marine, a publicly traded company, discovered a shipwreck it nicknamed the ?Black Swan,? recovering over 500,000 silver coins weighing some 17 tons and hundreds of gold coins and worked gold. According to news reports, the estimated value of the recovered property in this case was about $500 million.The United Nations estimates there are some 3 million shipwrecks on the ocean floor. Most, of course, are of no interest to treasure salvors; howev- er, there are many undiscovered wrecks of substantial interest to sub- sea explorers. Of course, treasure salvors are only one subset of subsea explorers, and a perennial conflict exists between the interests of archae- ologists and historians on the onehand, who are principally interested in collecting and preserving historical and culturally significant informa-tion, and treasure salvors on the other who, at least according to stereotype, are principally interested in recover- ing artifacts of value. As often occurs, the law has beenforced to adapt to these technological developments, and the adjustment has not always been entirely smooth. Early treasure salvage cases tended to rely upon the maritime law of ?finds? to hold that a party that recovered artifacts from an abandoned ship- wreck was entitled to keep them. More recently, however, the Courts have substantially favored applying maritime salvage law. In a nutshell, the difference is that under the law of finds the finder is considered to have title to the property once it obtains possession. Under the salvage law, by contrast, the salvor merely has a lien in the property and is deemed to be holding it in trust for the owner. It does not obtain title but instead isentitled to a salvage award to reward it for recovering the property for the benefit of the owner. The salvage law presumes, in other words, that a property?s owner did not intend to abandon the property merely because it was lost at sea.To enforce a salvage lien, the sal- vaged property must be arrested with- in the jurisdiction of a competentcourt or must otherwise be physically brought into the jurisdiction of the court. In the United States, the Federal District courts are vested with 18MTRSeptember2011 legal beatJurisdiction In Treasure Salvage Cases Should U.S. courts be involved when the wreck is in international waters?MTR#7 (18-33):MTR Layouts 8/29/2011 9:34 AM Page 18