The Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has giv­en ap­proval to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut and the In­sti­tute of Nau­ti­cal Ar­chae­ol­o­gy of the Unit­ed States to sal­vage ship­wrecks on the seabed of the Scar­bor­ough Har­bour that have been there for more than four cen­turies.

The project was agreed up­on at the week­ly meet­ing of the Coun­cil, chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don an­nounced at a me­dia brief­ing. He said an un­der­wa­ter search will be launched in the third quar­ter of this year for 12 Dutch ships sunk dur­ing fierce bat­tles for the is­land.

Lon­don said the project will be un­der­tak­en at no cost to the As­sem­bly and all arte­facts re­trieved from the seabed will re­main in To­ba­go. The project is be­ing fund­ed by Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic as well as non gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions in the Unit­ed States.

Lon­don said the project will yield many ben­e­fits for the is­land by way of pub­lic­i­ty via a va­ri­ety of me­dia out­lets and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the val­ues of con­ser­va­tion and the study of var­i­ous cul­tur­al sources. "Imag­ine a cruise ship dock­ing and dive en­thu­si­asts can ac­tu­al­ly have a dive just a cou­ple me­tres away. It is the on­ly site in the world where you have a dozen or more ships that have been down at the bot­tom of the ocean for over four cen­turies," he said.

Ear­li­er this month, Lon­don met the US Am­bas­sador Beat­rice Wel­ters to dis­cuss pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted by the uni­ver­si­ty. He said the As­sem­bly is pleased to col­lab­o­rate with the uni­ver­si­ty, the in­sti­tute and Texas ANM Uni­ver­si­ty since this par­tic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty ben­e­fit To­ba­go in re­search and dive tourism.