About 30 large-format images are being exhibited in the grille around the Castle of the Royal Force in Old Havana, as part of the traveling exhibition “Dive into History.”

The exhibition, sponsored jointly by the Spanish government and the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Office of the City’s Historian and other institutions, includs part of the world cultural heritage that has been submerged for more than 100 years.

In an interview with Prensa Latina, UNESCO Representative to the Convention on protection of the submarine cultural heritage Tatiana Villegas said technological development not only has opened an important scientific field, but also the possibility to show traces of the social and economic development of a certain time.

Nowadays, she said, profit motives and ignorance are jeopardizing the existence of these maritime treasures, witnesses of the history of mankind, hence the importance of this exhibition, which after Havana, will be to the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

Villegas also explained that the photographs are planned to be exhibited in some cities of the Caribbean, with the objective of showing to people that piece of history that otherwise is impossible to see because it is at the bottom of the sea.

This cultural heritage can be protected leaving it at the place they are currently, because there are better conditions to preserve it. A prove of that are the amphorae and the remains of Phoenician ships, anchors, cannons, cannon balls and other objects found, she said.

According to estimates, more than three million ships from different times are at the bottom of seas around the world.

For the original report go to http://news.cubasi.cu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2553:exhibition-of-sea-treasures-in-havana