ABSTRACT
Underwater cultural heritage is regulated by Law of the Sea Convention and UNESCO Convention Year 2001. Based on the two Conventions, states have obligations to protect and to preserve the underwater cultural heritage and cooperate for that purpose. The UNESCO Convention 2001 may conflict with the Law of Salvage and the Law of Find, since according to the Law of Salvage that the Salvators may exploit the sunken vessel for commercial purposes. While based on the Law of Find recognizes the principle of “finders keepers”. The research undertakes a critical examination the legal implication of the UNESCO Convention 2001 to the Law of Salvage and the Law of Find. Secondly, it analyses comprehensively the conflict between the UNESCO Convention 2001 with the Law of Salvage and the Law of Find in order to protect and to preserve underwater cultural heritage. Finally, it also analyses the possibilities to settle the conflicts. The paper is a normative research and the methodology employed in this paper is library research. While the approaches employed in the research is conceptual approach. The paper is analysed qualitatively and presented descriptively. The research finds that it is very important to harmonize and to fill the gap between the Law of Salvage and Law of Find with the UNESCO Convention Year 2001.
