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to the other commenters: there’s a difference between a week old wreck still being investigated and one a hundred years old.

same way there is a difference between photos of dead bodies undergoing forensic investigation, and those undergoing archaeological investigation.

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I wonder how much time has to pass before it is socially acceptable to gawk at a shipwreck?

I'm not really joking here, there has to be some sort of threshold and I'm not sure how it can be defined.

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a protected site due to this very topic of discussion. Diving it can get you in quite a bit of trouble: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/titanic-edmund-fitzgerald-1.68...

That had the added benefit, something which feels very strange to type, of not sinking in international waters. It's significantly easier to restrict access in that case.

It is somewhat surreal that a historically short amount of time must pass before people can visit these areas without it being taboo. Some of them, in my opinion, are extremely important to humanity such as Auschwitz and Choeung Ek, and the latter happened during my lifetime.

Surprisingly little time needs to pass from what I heard.

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