Underwater

So as I was watching TV today I happened upon a show about ancient underwater sites. Of which there was a segment on the sunken port of Alexandria in Egypt. The show told how the city was likely sunk due to seismic activity and the resulting tidal wave. However, more importantly the show featured the archaeologists excavating and finding numerous sculptures in great condition and even gold jewelry buried in the silt. The finds were really quite remarkable. This really got me thinking about underwater archaeology as a whole. This show I was watching was all about sunken cities or ports and I imagine that there are other archaeological sites that we know about that have not been thoroughly excavated. The reason for this is that underwater archaeology is expensive and limiting. For one, the archaeologists can only spend a minutes at a time underwater because they are restricted to their oxygen tanks. However, this is not exactly a bad thing. Because underwater archaeological sites are difficult to get to and the time one can spend at a site it limited it means that there is a higher probability that the site itself is going to remain undisturbed by treasure hunters, new or old. I can now see why there are professional treasure hunters that specifically target the sea, even though it costs more money to excavate, or salvage, the reward the the potential to be much greater as well.