The wooden ship rests off the coast of Rhode Island in the US, and is already worm-eaten. Experts from the Australian National Maritime Museum say time is critical in the race to save parts of the wreck that are important both historically and for future study.

In February, the museum announced the identity of the wreck at the site known as RI 2394. That announcement caused a stoush with the Rhode Island custodians, who said it was premature. However, the museum says it has the evidence it needs and wanted to use the declaration to push for the site’s protection.

Reuben Shipway, a University of Plymouth marine biology lecturer, has dived the site. He found teredo navalis – worm-like molluscs known as shipworms or the “termites of the ocean” – riddling the wood, along with boring crustaceans called gribbles.

Australians have no power to directly intervene, but hope the Americans will take measures to preserve what’s left. The museum has discussed site protection with the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap), and has warned that it needs “active management”. The museum has also raised it with the local Rhode Island heritage authorities.

After the report that the exposed wood was already riddled with shipworms and gribbles, experts now say fish, lobsters and other marine animals are eating the wood to try to get at the worms inside. Meanwhile, a storm could shift the sand on the ocean floor, exposing more wood to animals and the elements.

Dr James Hunter, the museum’s curator of naval heritage and archaeology, said many people think about looters when they hear about the need to protect shipwreck sites.

“That’s an immediate concern and one that’s legitimate, but the natural processes can get overlooked,” he said.

“You have issues with shipworm and with gribbles [and] fish; I’ve watched fish chew on timber.

“They feed on just about anything, and what they’re trying to get out is worms and snails and whatever happens to be in the wood.”

Kieran Hosty, the museum’s maritime archaeology manager, said the threats were “nothing new” and that wrecks had “no chance” if timber was above the sea bed and in temperate waters.

“We have encountered shipworms before on all the timber sites in Rhode Island,” he said.

“If the Endeavour is left exposed, there’s a continued threat to the site.”

While there’s a chance storms could expose more of the wreck, he said, it was also possible they could return to the site and find it entirely buried and therefore protected.

But there are also ways humans can stop the damage.

Hunter said any parts that were buried were “deoxygenated”, so nothing could get at them. It’s also possible to use a “geotextile” – similar to a shade cloth – to keep the worms out.

Hosty said the easiest and cheapest way is sandbagging the site, using sand from the local environment.

“[Or] you can have sand pumped on to the site. In more extreme circumstances, you can use artificial seaweed – basically a [neoprene] seaweed frond on a mesh base – which attracts sand as it goes past,” he said.

“We’ve used all these techniques successfully.”

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Cook sailed the Endeavour through the South Pacific and to New Zealand and Australia, where he claimed the eastern coast for Great Britain in 1770, calling it New South Wales.

During the American war of independence, the ship, by then known as Lord Sandwich, was scuttled.

After the museum declared earlier this year that the wreck was the Endeavour, Rimap’s head, Dr Kathy Abbass, blamed “Australian emotions or politics” for the “premature” announcement.

Abass declined an interview but said the reports of damage would be included in a Rimap report due to be published shortly.

“You will see an interpretation of Dr Shipway’s results as part of Rimap’s archaeological study,” she said.

In February the Australian Maritime Museum announced that the shipwreck, in waters off the coast of Rhode Island in the US, was “the final resting place” of that famous historical ship.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap) challenged that assertion, sparking a transatlantic spat over the site known as RI 2394.

Now an expert has told the Boston Globe that he has found evidence that shipworms have infiltrated the wood.

Reuben Shipway, a University of Plymouth marine biology lecturer, dived down to the wreck and found shipworms had infiltrated a piece of wood belonging to RI 2394.

The shipworms – actually a worm-like mollusc – infiltrate and eat through wood.

“It means one of the most important wrecks in human history is being destroyed right underneath our noses,” Shipway said.

“This is a vessel that connects the UK to Australia, and to America, because it also played a really important role in the battle for American independence. It’s our shared cultural heritage. And it’s being destroyed.”

The Australian Maritime Museum said the site needed to be protected. “When the museum made the announcement regarding the Endeavour we raised the need for the ongoing protection of the site as a major concern,” a spokesperson said.

“There are a number of solutions that could be put in place to protect not only the site of the Endeavour but other important vessels in Newport Harbour.”

Australian researchers have been working with Rimap for more than two decades to positively identify the wreck but the relationship soured after the museum’s former chief executive, Kevin Sumption, said he was “confident” it was the Endeavour.

Rimap’s head, Dr Kathy Abbass, angrily hit back. She said while it might be the famous ship, work was ongoing. At the time she said Rimap was the lead organisation and would post its eventual report when it was sure.

“Rimap recognises the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but Rimap’s conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics,” she said.

The museum spokesperson said they looked forward to receiving Abbass’s report, which is expected shortly.

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The Endeavour sailed the South Pacific from 1768 to 1771, as Cook conducted scientific research and charted the coast of New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coastline before claiming the land for Great Britain.

In 1778 British forces scuttled it in Newport Harbour, during the American war of independence. It’s one of several shipwrecks in the area.

Shipway said the exposed wood of the wreck was being eaten from within by Teredo navalis, naval shipworm. “The shipworms’ guts are full of wood,” he told the Boston Globe.

Another species, crustaceans called gribbles, were also eating the wood.

Shipway said anyone who cared about the wreck should come up with the resources and funding to protect it.

The museum’s chief executive, Kevin Sumption, announced on Thursday he was satisfied that a shipwreck in waters off Rhode Island in the US was “the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history”.

But the museum’s US partner organisation, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap), said the claim the Endeavour had been identified was a breach of contract, and blamed “Australian emotions or politics” for the “premature” announcement.

The museum responded that it was not in breach of any commitments, and that Sumption was “confident” the wreck was the Endeavour.

Cook sailed the ship around the South Pacific before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770. It was scuttled in Newport Harbor by British forces in 1778, during the American War of Independence.

Since 1999 maritime archaeologists have been investigating several 18th-century shipwrecks in the area.

Announcing the positive identification on Thursday, Sumption paid tribute to Rimap and its head, Dr Kathy Abbass, for their “commitment to the site and its history”.

But Abbass said Rimap was the lead organisation for the study and that while the shipwreck was consistent with “what might be expected of the Endeavour”, there was no “indisputable data” to prove it.

“There are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification,” she said in a statement provided to Guardian Australia.

“When the study is done, Rimap will post the legitimate report on its website. Rimap recognises the connection between Australian citizens of British descent and the Endeavour, but Rimap’s conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics.”

In a statement, the Australian museum said it had worked with Abbass for 22 years and acknowledged “that she is entitled to her own opinion regarding the vast amount of evidence that we have accumulated”.

“As stated today, our director Kevin Sumption is confident that the preponderance of evidence identifies shipwreck site RI 2394 in Newport Harbor as the last resting place of Endeavour,” the statement said.

“The museum has reviewed our previous agreements with Rimap and we conclude that we are not in breach of any current commitments. We look forward to pursuing a due process of peer review and consultation with all stakeholders in Rhode Island.”

Several details on the wreck convinced archaeologists they had found Endeavour after matching structural details and the shape of the remains to those on 18th-century plans of the ship.

“I am satisfied that this is the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history,” Sumption said at the maritime museum.

“The last pieces of the puzzle had to be confirmed before I felt able to make this call. Based on archival and archaeological evidence, I’m convinced it’s the Endeavour.

“It’s an important historical moment, as this vessel’s role in exploration, astronomy and science applies not just to Australia, but also Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Only about 15% of the vessel remains and researchers are now focused on what can be done to protect and preserve it.

Originally launched in 1764 as the Earl of Pembroke, the ship was renamed Endeavour in 1768 by Britain’s Royal Navy and prepared for a major scientific voyage to the Pacific.

From 1768 to 1771, the Endeavour sailed the South Pacific, primarily to record the transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1769.

Cook then sailed it around the South Pacific searching for “the Great Southern Land”, charting the coast of New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coastline before claiming the land for Great Britain on 22 August 1770.

The Endeavour was later sold to private owners, renamed Lord Sandwich and deliberately sunk in 1778 by British forces during the American War of Independence.

A year later Cook was killed in Hawaii during his third Pacific voyage, 10 years before the first fleet arrived in New South Wales to establish a British colony.

Now Dr Robert Ballard is pioneering cutting-edge technology – autonomous underwater vehicles that will “revolutionise” the search for more than three million shipwrecks that lie scattered across ocean floors, according to a Unesco estimate. Many will offer new insights into life on board at the time of sinking, hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

“We’re going to be finding them like crazy,” Ballard told the Observer. “It’s going to be rapid discovery because of this technology. New chapters of human history are to be read.

“All the work I’ve done in the past in archaeology used vehicles that were connected to a ship. The ones that we’re building now are revolutionary new vehicles, able to work in extremely complex and rugged terrains – a new class of autonomous underwater vehicles that have their own intelligence and that are going to revolutionise the field of marine archaeology.”

They are all the more extraordinary because they allow marine archaeologists to explore the ocean floor without needing to go to sea themselves. In the US, he recently undertook an expedition exploring Lake Huron and found an 1800s wreck – a search that was all done from land.

“I don’t have to be on my ship now,” Ballard said. “We don’t even have to have ships. But I come because I want to get away.” The explorer, who has just turned 79, is on his 158th expedition, conducting a scientific exploration of the deep sea in the Pacific.

National Geographic this month publishes his memoir, Into the Deep, in which he writes of a passion for ocean exploration that was inspired by Nemo, the fictional captain of the submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne’s classic novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Aged 12, he watched Disney’s screen adaptation: “It blew my mind … I wanted to be Captain Nemo. I wanted to walk on the ocean floor.”

He now owns and operates the exploration vessel Nautilus, a state-of-the-art ship rigged for research in oceanography, geology, biology and archaeology, which can be followed by the public online.

As a pioneer in the early use of deep-diving submersibles, he is particularly excited by the latest technology as it is far cheaper to operate. A mobile system that can go on smaller ships or work from the shore costs a few thousand pounds a day, rather than tens of thousands.

The vehicles can travel to the deepest depths and stay down for days on end. They can also descend to a wreck much faster. “You can’t just instantly get to the deep bottom as a diver,” Ballard said. “You reach terminal velocity at about 100 metres every minute. To get to the Titanic, it took me 2½ hours to descend 4,000 metres. With these vehicles, it would have taken little over an hour.”

While the technology is being used in marine research and environmental monitoring, the archaeological world has been slow to adopt it, he said: “It started in the military, like most of these advanced technologies. I served in the US Navy for 30 years, and I had access to a lot of technology that was classified and that slowly leaked out… the social sciences tend to lag in adopting new technologies because it’s not their strength.”

For years, Ballard had dreamed of finding the wreck of the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912: “In 1985, a top-secret navy assignment to explore sunken nuclear subs gave me the opportunity to follow that dream.”

Asked if he would have found it sooner with this latest technology, he said: “Oh God, yes.”

He is among marine archaeologists, scientists and geophysicists involved with a new “Dive & Dig” podcast series, presented by historian Bettany Hughes and funded by the Honor Frost Foundation.

The village that once sat on the Mediterranean coast now lies 10 metres beneath the waves off Israel’s shore. It was inundated when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. But Atlit-Yam was destroyed before then, and swiftly, perhaps by a tsunami. Buried under sand at the bottom of the sea, it now ranks as the largest and best preserved prehistoric settlement ever found on the seafloor. Human skeletons still lie there in graves, undisturbed.

For marine archaeologists, Atlit-Yam is a trove from the Neolithic world. Research on the buildings, tools and the remains of past lives has revealed how the bustling village once worked. “It looks as though it was inhabited until the day it was submerged,” said Benedetto Allotta, head of industrial engineering at the University of Florence. But for all the secrets the site has shared, it is only one window into a lost world. For a fuller picture, researchers need more sunken settlements. The hard part is finding them.

In January, work will start on a new project to transform the search for sunken cities, ancient shipwrecks and other subsea curiosities. Led by Italian researchers, Archeosub will build a new generation of robotic submarines, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), for marine archaeologists. “You can find plenty of human settlements not far from the coast,” Allotta said. “In the Mediterranean there will be a lot more Atlit-Yams waiting to be explored and studied.”

The goal of Archeosub is to put sophisticated AUVs in the hands of cash-strapped researchers. That, in part, means turning the costly, heavy technology of the military and oil industries into far cheaper and lighter robots. They must be affordable for archaeological organisations and light enough to launch by hand from a small boat, or even the shore, rather than from a winch on a large research vessel.

Slashing the cost and weight is only the start. The team behind Archeosub has begun to make the AUVs smarter too. When thrown overboard, the submarines can become part of an “internet of underwater things” which brings the power of wifi to the deep. Once hooked up, the AUVs can talk to each other and, for example, work out the most efficient way to survey a site, or find particular objects on the seabed.

Field tests show the approach can work. When cargo ships near Porto in northern Portugal lose containers overboard, AUVs can be deployed to find the missing goods. And in a trial last year, Allotta’s group sent three AUVs to search for wrecks at Marzamemi, off the Sicilian coast. The site is the final resting place of a Roman ship, known as the “church wreck”, which sank while ferrying pre-formed parts of marble and breccia for an early Christian church in the 6th century AD. “We used the AUVs to pass through and look for new ruins,” Allotta said. “We could do a reconstruction of the area, where old Roman ships sank while bringing marble columns to Italy,” he said.

Creating an internet beneath the waves is no breeze. Slip under the surface and the electromagnetic waves used in wifi networks travel only centimetres. Instead, a more complex mix of technologies is called for. Acoustic waves, which are affected by depth, temperature, salinity and surface wind, are used to communicate over long distances underwater. At close range, AUVs can share data over light beams. But more creative solutions are also envisaged, where an AUV working on the seabed offloads data to a second which then surfaces and beams it home by satellite link. Work is underway on AUVs that can beam pictures from the seabed over acoustic waves, and dock with others that charge them up. Surface buoys that receive GPS signals tell the AUVs where they are.

“If you want to build an internet of underwater things, you cannot use the technology we have developed for the terrestrial world,” said Chiara Petrioli, a computer engineer who leads the work under the Sunrise project at Rome University. “You have to be smarter.”

David Lane, a professor of autonomous engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, has created a marine version of Dropbox for the underwater internet of things. It allows AUVs to share information from seafloor scans and other data. So if an AUV on a first pass survey spies an intriguing object on the seabed, it can share the coordinates with a nearby AUV that carries better cameras and sonar, and arrange for a closer inspection once it has left the area.

“The use of these vehicles has huge potential for marine archaeology,” Lane said. “There’s a lot of history wrapped up in what’s lying on the seabed.”

One site where Allotta plans to deploy the new AUVs is the Gulf of Baratti off the coast of Tuscany. In 1974, a remarkable shipwreck was discovered there in 18 metres of water. More than a merchant ship, the 2000-year-old vessel was a travelling medical emporium. More than 100 wooden vials were found on board, along with other ancient medical supplies, including tin containers of tablets that may have been dissolved and used as eyewash. Other Roman ships went down in the waters, shedding cargoes of olive oil and wine held in huge terracotta pots called dolia. Often it is only the dolia that remain, the wooden ships lost, or at least buried, under silt.

Allotta hopes to have the first test results from the Archeosub project in the summer. “Right now, we don’t have the right technology to give to archaeologists,” he said. “But we are close.”

It must be remembered that it is our cultural attachment that will be doing the dredging, our obsession and fascination with these objects that circulate as evidence of the all-powerful histories of empire. Where we decide to put Cook’s ship and its contents will shape where it takes us. Through its presentation we will relate to it culturally; as an object of desire or fascination for some, and boredom for others. We will tell a new story and it will make us feel something.

Many of the Anglo-American and Australian public are likely to feel awe in the presence of the Endeavour. As we stand before it, in whatever state it is in (probably not wrecked but reconstructed to its “original” form), it is unlikely to rouse anything like the grief that has ripped the souls of millions of Indigenous Australians. Especially if we preserve it, present it and interpret it as part of the British Museum’s set.

This is not to say that the ship should become an opportunity for apology or sympathetic feeling. In Australia many Indigenous activists, public intellectuals and academics tell us that they aren’t interested in sympathy or other paternalistic emotions – an attitude that will be no surprise to those familiar with public forums such as the Guardian column IndigenousX.

Which should not be to dismiss the historical value of saying sorry, either. And it certainly isn’t to speak on behalf of Indigenous people – as if I ever could. It is merely to say that we are all looking forward as well as back, that life is moving on despite us, and we need to move things on too, in a way that changes the story. A story that until now has been that of “the famous British explorer”. A story that is in fact one of colonial rule, whiteness, and Indigenous sovereignty. A story in which we are all intertwined.

There is no such thing as “this side of the world”. The world isn’t made up of sides. Australia is very much “here” – Britons hear the accents, buy the products, watch the TV. And we are very much “there” – we fill the tourism ventures, go backpacking, populate their ABC with our BBC. We export our media. And in return Australia gave us The Conversation.

The resurrection of Cook’s ship is taking place here, in our shared world; the one without sides. This is why much academic literature refers to the colonial past as a “present”, to recognise how what is happening now continually remakes the effects of the past.

Perhaps what should be most worrying is that the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project “is launching a campaign to finance the construction of a storage facility to accommodate the objects”. Is it so hard to imagine that the ship should be placed in the hands of a co-operative of First Nations organisations rather than stay with those that will pander to a whitewashed version of history? As ever, we entrust our history to scientists, sometimes governments and corporations, rather than to those who produce counter-narratives that could unsettle our place in the world.

How we choose to open up the Endeavour to modern interpretation will dictate how much opportunity there is for new stories to be told, for the familiar narratives of a heroic Captain Cook to be subverted by the imperialistic reality.

It is hard not be cynical about the possible resting place for this famous old ship. My girlfriend jokes about an auction on eBay. I have a vision of a jolly theme park, Cook’s vessel digitally mediated with fancy holograms, all the better to distract from the reality of the Endeavour’s colonial past.

But the ship that saw so many adventures was sold, forgotten and lost. For centuries, the fate of HMS Endeavour has remained a mystery.

Now marine archaeologists are almost certain they have found its wreck at the bottom of the sea – off exotic Rhode Island.

Researchers with the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap) will announce on Wednesday that they are nearly sure that they have found the Endeavour, the ship that Cook captained on his voyages to New Zealand and Australia.

“We usually don’t make any announcement as we keep working away until we have something significant to say,” Dr Kathy Abbass, principal investigator, said. “We may say, ‘we think we found the Endeavour,’ well, yeah. Now I have to prove it.”

Admiralty documents detailing the Endeavour’s dimensions have led Abbass to believe that the ship, built like a sturdy commercial vessel to carry survival and scientific cargo on a long voyage, was sold into private hands in 1775 and renamed Lord Sandwich – the first lord of the admiralty at the time. When the 13 American colonies revolted a year later, it was leased back to the British navy as a troop transport for British and Hessian soldiers, and then used as a prison ship in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, during the war.

Rhode Island was the first state to disavow its loyalty to King George III, exactly two months before the 13 colonies formally issued the Declaration of Independence.

By late August 1778, American forces had besieged Newport, and were hoping the French navy could help them oust the British from the harbor town. The British decided to scuttle 13 other ships, Lord Sandwich among them, to stymie the French navy en route. A world away its former captain had crossed the Bering Sea into the Arctic Circle and was hunting walruses for food and oil. He would die only a few months after his most famous ship was wrecked.

Abbass’s team, working with Australian researchers, have mapped nine of the 13 sites where the ships were scuttled. Five of those ships were wrecked in an arc, near the modern Naval War College to the north and in the waters by Brenton Cove to the south. The researchers have mapped four.

“We think we have a really good chance to close in on the fifth one,” Abbass said, noting a recent analysis of remote sensing data on the harbor.

In a statement, Rimap said it “now has an 80 to 100% chance that the Lord Sandwich is still in Newport Harbor, and because the Lord Sandwich was Capt Cook’s Endeavour, that means Rimap has found her, too.”

The researchers will next map the remaining portions of the harbor in their search for the wreck itself.

The researchers estimate that their research on 83 projects, including other revolutionary-era vessels, second world war wrecks and a reputed slave ship, has a total value of more than $5.5m. The wreck of the Endeavour would probably be their most valuable discovery yet: the first European ship to land in Australia, leading to the founding of a British colony there, and the flagship of one of Britain’s greatest explorers.

Although the Endeavour was largely forgotten by its contemporaries, its later fame has led to rumors and speculation about the ship’s fate. Some have suggested the ship survived the war, was refitted and registered as a French vessel, La Liberté, and then sunk into Newport harbor in 1794. Others believed the ship actually made it back to London, and was opened to visitors in 1825, and in the 19th century a New Zealand captain thought he found the wreck in Dusky Sound, only to be proven wrong. In 1991, when the space shuttle Endeavour was rolled out for service by Nasa, the space agency was presented with what they called “a piece of the original ship”, by the University of Rhode Island.

Abbass hopes to put the mystery of the original Endeavour’s fate to rest in the next few months, and called for a new facility to conserve, display and store some of the artifacts pulled from the underwater sites. Rimap hopes to build this facility at Butts Hill Fort, the center of where American forces stood during the battle for the colony.

The Esmeralda was one of two ships that sank in a storm off the coast of Oman in 1503, only five years after Da Gama discovered the first sea route from Europe to India.

After three years of excavation and historical and scientific research – the findings of which are reported on nationalgeographic.com – the archaeologists, which included teams from Bournemouth University and Oman’s ministry of culture, announced that they had found the site of the wreck, and with it a collection of artefacts including one of the rarest coins in the world and what may be part of a previously unknown maritime astrolabe.

David Mearns, director of West Sussex-based Blue Water Recoveries which led the expedition, told the Guardian the major significance of the find was the date of its sinking, very early in the period when a handful of European maritime powers were racing to discover and exploit new routes to the east.

“This is the earliest ship [from the period of European maritime exploration of Asia] that has been found by a long stretch,” he said. “If you consider that that pre-colonial period started on a major basis with Columbus, in 1492, this is just a decade after that.”

The ship sank in a storm off the coast of what is now the small Omani island of Al-Hallaniyah in 1503, with the loss of all crew and of its captain Vicente Sodre, a maternal uncle of da Gama.

Because it broke up in shallow waters, very little of the ship itself has survived, but thousands of artefacts were uncovered from the sand in the shallow bay. Among them was an incredibly rare silver coin called an indio, of which only one other is known to exist. The coins were forged in 1499 after da Gama’s first voyage to India, which helps date the wreckage, Mearns said. Stone cannonballs appearing to bear Sodre’s initials were also discovered.

However Mearns said the most exciting discovery was a metal disc bearing the Portuguese coat of arms and an image of an armillary sphere, a model of celestial globe, which was the personal emblem of the then King of Portugal. The archaeologists have speculated that it may be a component part of a type of astrolabe, a navigational device, but are not certain, he said.

“There’s no doubt it’s a very important object. It’s made of valuable material, it’s got these two iconic symbols on it, they don’t just stamp those things on to any piece of equipment on a ship. This was an important thing, but what was it?” He said he hoped other experts would now add their input to help identify the object.

“What’s really exciting about this discovery being so early, this may be something nobody has ever seen before, and that’s challenging for the archaeologists but also fun and exciting.”

He said the dig had been a “dream job” for the archaeologists. “These are people who work in England in dry suits in freezing cold water, sometimes they can see no further than their nose. So to come to this really beautiful island, completely remote, you have nothing there … this lovely bay, warm waters and you are visited every day by dolphins coming to play with you.

“These are the sort of exotic holidays that people would pay tens of thousands of pounds to go on.”

The findings of the expedition were published on Tuesday by The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

Ayoub al-Busaidi, the supervisor of marine archaeology at the Oman ministry of heritage and culture, said the dig marked the first underwater excavation carried out by his country. He said it had inspired officials to continue to explore the waters around the sultanate for other finds.

“Oman is now looking at outside archives to read about the relationships and trade between Oman and the outside world.”

That is the stark situation described by marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley, who says fishing boats that use heavyweight bottom-trawling and shellfish-dredging equipment are annihilating precious artefacts and sunken ships. Our desire for fresh scallops is putting our heritage at risk.

“We know what damage can be done by these bulldozers of the deep – trawlers that drag hundreds of tonnes of gear over the seabed,” says Kingsley, who is director of Wreck Watch International. “They are destroying great swaths of the marine environment and are turning habitats rich in coral, sponge and sea fan into monotonous expanses of gravel and mud.

“But fauna and flora can regenerate. The problem for marine archaeology is that once shipwrecks have been struck by fishing gear, they – and their contents – are obliterated for ever.”

That represents a tremendous loss to society, he argues. Intriguing archaeological artefacts have been brought up from the sea floor over decades, ranging from stone age axes to second world war planes. One wreck yielded a 17th-century golf club.

“We don’t really know fully what is down there,” says Kingsley. “And at this rate we will never find out.”

Among the sites worst affected by trawlers is Doggerland, a vast area that was inhabited during the Mesolithic period 8,000 years ago, but has since been inundated by the waters of the North Sea. Hundreds of stone tools have been dredged up from it over the centuries. Today, it is being “bulldozed” by trawlers. Similarly endangered is the wreck of the 73-gun Dutch warship Eendracht, which was sunk in 1665 in the Battle of Lowestoft during the second Anglo-Dutch war.

Nor is the problem confined to Britain. Many other marine sites around the world are at risk, says Kingsley. These include the seabed off Takashima Island, Japan, where the Mongol fleet of Kublai Khan was destroyed by a hurricane in 1281. Weapons, statues and pottery have since been dragged up, but again the area is risk from bottom-dredging, says Kingsley.

These and many other sites around the globe and in British waters are being pulverised by fishing boats that use huge, 30-tonne nets that have metal doors and chains to hold them down and which are dragged across the seabed, over and over again. It is the equivalent of allowing a fleet of tractors to drag 30 tonnes of gear over a 150-metre wide swath of land for most days of the year. The effect on the habitat – and the treasures it contains – is catastrophic. “This is not a business in which treasures are being surgically removed. They are being obliterated on a widespread scale,” says Kingsley.

But what can be done to halt this desecration is less obvious. “We need to fish to help feed the planet. I accept that. But we have to do something to save our archaeological treasures.” Kingsley suggests a “red list” of key sites. Fishing boats would have keep clear of them or, in some cases, they could be protected by surrounding them with concrete pillars on the seabed. “In the end, we are only going to be able to save a fraction of our most important sites and only if we act as a matter of urgency.”

Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage: Marine Archaeology’s Greatest Threat by Sean Kingsley is published by Bloomsbury (£45)