Strategies for Protection of Wooden Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Baltic Sea Against Marine Borers. The EU Project ‘WreckProtect’

Abstract

Marine borers constitute a great danger to historical shipwreck in marine environments as they are able to decompose wood material in just a few years. Recently, there have been indications that the marine borer Teredo navalis is spreading into the brackish Baltic sea, where thousands of invaluable historical wrecks for centuries have had unique preservation conditions. The WreckProtect project was a coordination and support action funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Program. The main objective of the project was to develop tools for predicting the spread of marine borers into the Baltic and to evaluate methods for in situ protection of the historical wreck and submerged settlements. This paper gives a summary final report of the project and an overview of results.

Keywords:

• WreckProtect
• shipwreck
• Baltic Sea
• decay
• in situ protection
• GIS modelling
• Teredo navalis

The work leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's seventh Framework programme (FP7/2007–2013, Environment) under grant agreement no. 226225. The European Commission 7th framework programme, Environment, is gratefully acknowledged for promoting this cross-disciplinary area of research.

Notes

1 For detailed information on results, we recommend the guidelines on <www.wreckprotect.eu> and the project monograph (Björdal and Gregory, 2012).

2 <www.dhigroup.com>.

3 The Guideline for prediction of decay is freely available as a PDF download from <www.wreckprotect. eu>. User-friendly maps can be downloaded for use in database/GIS systems from <www.wreckprotect.eu>. For those who do not have their own systems, MACHU GIS (Managing Cultural Heritage Underwater, a European Project under the Culture 2000 programme 2006–09) is available for (restricted) use at <www.machuproject.eu>.

4 The guideline is available, including the cost benefit analysis, from <www.wreckprotect.eu>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Gjelstrup Björdal

Charlotte Gjelstrup Björdal gained a BSc in conservation from the Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, 1986, specializing in conservation of waterlogged archaeological wood. In 2000 she defended her doctoral thesis ‘Waterlogged Archaeological Wood — Biodegradation and its Implication for Conservation’, at the Dept of Wood Science, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. During the last fifteen years her research has focused on microbial degradation processes of archaeological wood in marine and terrestrial environments; in situ preservation, decay processes, and reburial techniques for shipwrecks and other historical constructions are ongoing research topics. Currently she is the director of the Conservation Program at the Dept of Conservation, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Correspondence to: Charlotte Gjelstrup Björdal, University of Gothenburg, Dept of Conservation, Box 130, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. Email: [email protected]

David Gregory

David Gregory worked for several years in the pharmaceutical industry as an analytical chemist. After that he obtained a BSc in archaeology (University of Leicester), MPhil in Maritime studies (St Andrews University), and PhD (‘Formation processes in underwater archaeology: a study of the deterioration of archaeological materials in the marine environment’, 1996 (University of Leicester). He is currently employed as a senior scientist at the National Museum of Denmark investigating methods of in situ preservation in waterlogged and underwater environments.

Correspondence to: David Gregory, National Museum of Denmark, Conservation Department, I.C. Modewegs Vej, Brede, Kongens Lyngby, DK-2800, Denmark. Email: [email protected]