"You guys have a great resource in the maritime history of this island," Peter Hess told an audience at Kodiak College on Sunday.

About 40 people attended the lecture by Hess, of Wilmington, Del., sponsored in part by the Kodiak Maritime Museum.

Audience members heard stories of silver, gold and jewels salvaged in recent years from wrecks dating to the days of the Spanish galleons. Hess recalled his excitement at seeing real treasure chests bursting with pieces of eight.

He said advances in scuba diving technology will make sunken ships around Kodiak more accessible. Hess foresees a time when diving could join fishing and hunting as a local economic asset.

"I think you have the beginnings of a new industry," he said.

Among the most interesting and accessible local wrecks is the Kadiak, a Russian-American merchant barque carrying a cargo of ice that sank in about 80 feet of water off Spruce Island in 1860, making it the oldest wreck so far found in Alaska.

Hess visited the Kadiak on Saturday and was able to touch one of the cannons it carried for protection.

"This is a world-class site that will bring people in from the East Coast and all over," he said.

Hess' underwater partners were Steve Lloyd of Anchorage, who discovered the wreck's exact location last summer, Josh Lewis of Kodiak and Andrey Nikolaev, a recreational diver from Sakhalin Island, Russia.

Out of the water, Hess spends much of his professional time navigating the maelstrom of competing claims, precedents and jurisdictions that result from discoveries.

"Once something is found, the first thing that's asked is, 'Who owns it?'" he said.

Assuming that a ship's owners have abandoned a wreck, the basic principle of salvage law is simple: finders keepers.

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner