I was also curious, so I did some digging on the legality, safety, and ethics of discovering a historic shipwreck. What not to doYou might be tempted, after finding a shipwreck, to claim it—or even just grab something from it. In the United States, the Abandoned Shipwreck act of 1987 states that all shipwrecks legally belong to the state in which they’re found. Put simply, discovering a shipwreck in the United States doesn’t give you any kind of legal right to salvage the wreck. Your first point of contact should be the historic preservation office in the state where you found the shipwreck.