Earlier this year, the UK government published proposals on setting up a new law on the Marine Historic Environment. True, the present law is a mess. Salvage allows anyone to break off bits of an unknown wreck and then claim the whole wreck: hardly conducive to protecting historic sites. Against that there is a Protection of Wrecks Act, another on military remains, not to mention the various powers of English Heritage.

But the government's proposals are no less confused. It shows no way of defusing this tension. At one point they call for less restrictions on diving ('access' is the buzz-word), at another they call for site designation and reporting rules that would probably deter all but the most dedicated recreational divers.

English Heritage would no doubt love to have a taxpayer-funded team of expert archaeologist-divers and drive 'amateur' recreational divers off the sites. But let's remember that 95% of the historic wrecks that have been found were discovered by those same recreational divers. And the seabed is always moving and scattering archaeological remains. By the time officialdom has donned its snorkel, the evidence would probably be lost. Sorry, but this is another case where the amateurs - ordinary people with a real enthusiasm for what they do - are better than distant, tax-funded 'experts'.