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Recent reports from Ireland that scuba-diving treasure hunters are pillaging the remains of a First World War shipwreck have brought new urgency to a campaign to designate Canada’s own sunken naval vessels “ocean war graves.”

Led by retired Merchant Navy Captain Paul Bender, 90, the campaign has had little success over the last decade, except to show that when it comes to protecting the final resting places of wartime sailors, Canada is the odd country out.

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So as sport diving becomes more advanced and less costly, nine wartime ships in Canadian waters — most sunk by German U-boats, others by accident — are increasingly vulnerable to grave robbers. Captain Bender said he has even heard rumours of someone displaying a human skull on their mantlepiece after taking it from an allied shipwreck off the west coast of England.

“It’s gruesome,” he said.

As Captain Bender describes it, “the human remains of the sailors who were not able to escape into lifeboats or onto life rafts may be found not in segregated grave sites, but anywhere within the twisted wreckage of the ship in which they once served, perhaps scattered throughout the ship, perhaps huddled together in one or more compartments with no hope of escape because buckled bulkheads prevent the opening of watertight doors.”