Praia, 15 May (Inforpress) – The president of the IPC said today that the size of the sea in Cabo Verde presented the country with “great challenges” in terms of preserving its underwater heritage, admitting that “great shipwrecks” in the archipelago’s seas had yet to be identified.
Samira Baessa told Inforpress that the Institute of Cultural Heritage (IPC) knows that there are diving companies/entities that carry out activities in Cape Verdean waters and that the heritage is “quite vulnerable” to looting and theft, but that the “Margullar” project could create new mechanisms to boost this heritage.
The ongoing project, he said, provides for the creation of underwater archaeological parks through which diving companies and entities will be able to practice their activities, but subject to respect for the principles of the Underwater Heritage Convention itself, in the tourist context, without touching the artifacts deposited on the bottom of the sea.
“Enforcement is reinforced because the Maritime Police is doing its job. The Coast Guard is also doing its job. We know that very recently there was a complaint that was made by the fishing community of the island of Maio, there is a much greater awareness of this issue than there was until the decade of 2011,” she said.
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