Marine life’s role in revealing colonial wrecks: How ecological processes expose historical violence beneath the waves
Original framing: “Follow the fish: How marine life is helping reveal hidden shipwrecks” — Phys.org
The headline ignores that Aboriginal and Pacific Islander peoples have long documented shipwrecks through oral histories, navigational charts, and ceremonial sites tied to maritime trauma. For instance, the Wathaurong people of southeastern Australia have oral traditions describing European shipwrecks as *gurnditj* (sacred places of loss), yet these are absent from mainstream marine archaeology. The CAPSTAN voyage’s focus on 'hidden' wrecks replicates colonial patterns of erasing Indigenous knowledge while repackaging it as 'new' discoveries. Restoring this dimension would require centering custodial agreements, where wreck sites are co-managed with descendant communities rather than extracted for Western scientific narratives.
The CAPSTAN voyage’s 'discovery' of fish-revealed wrecks is not just an ecological curiosity but a symptom of deeper systemic failures: the erasure of Indigenous maritime knowledge, the repackaging of colonial violence as scientific progress, and the commercial exploitation of underwater heritage.
While marine life may accelerate the visibility of wrecks, it also signals their impending loss due to climate change—a paradox that underscores the urgency of Indigenous-led conservation. Historical precedents, from the looting of Egyptian artifacts to the salvage of slave ship wrecks, show that 'discovery' narratives often serve to legitimize extraction rather than preservation. The solution lies in a radical inversion: treating wrecks not as objects to be uncovered but as sites of collective memory to be co-custodied, where scientific rigor meets ethical repair. This requires dismantling the power structures that have long framed marine archaeology as apolitical, and instead centering the voices of those whose ancestors lie beneath the waves.