Underwater Cultural Heritage at Risk? Global Insights into Deep-Sea Mining and Trawling Impacts

Deep-sea mining for technology-critical minerals and expanding bottom-contact fishing threaten underwater cultural heritage (UCH). This study evaluates global exposure of UCH to these activities by integrating open-access datasets on seabed extraction, geoscience, and shipwreck locations. Documented shipwrecks are concentrated in the North Atlantic, while the Southern Ocean contains fewest documented sites. Most wrecks (95%) lie in shallow epipelagic waters, and only a small fraction (1.64%) fall within potential deep-sea mining zones. 71.63% of the wreck record correlates with areas of fishing effort: 0.04% in high effort areas, 1.48% in moderate effort areas, and 98.52% in low effort areas. Although 7.55% of wrecks are located within established MPAs, less than 0.20% are in fully protected areas where no extractive or destructive activities are allowed. Formalising industry avoidance behaviours through cross-boundary governance offers a pragmatic opportunity for maritime archaeology - the transformation of informal avoidance into a deliberate conservation strategy.