Tomorrow begins a conference in Washington DC to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, "Keeping the Lid on Davy Jones' Locker: A Conference on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage from Titanic to Today" organized by the Lawyer's Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation.

The story of the sinking of the luxury liners RMS Titanic on April 12, 1912, fictionalized in the captivating movie Titanic by James Cameron (1997) was motivated, according to the director, because of his fascination with shipwrecks. Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition is currently in Las Vegas. I saw it in Montreal in 2009 and found it fascinating, including realizing that many people on the ship had never  purchased their tickets for the maiden voyage but had been rebooked from another ship.

The conference will address such issues such as who owns or controls shipwrecks and the knowledge and artifacts newly available with recent technology that can reach these sunken treasures. You may read more about this conference here.