Making Space for Underwater Cultural Heritage in Europe’s Ocean Future

The future of Europe’s seas is being shaped now — not only by new technologies and environmental pressures, but by the values that are allowed to count in marine decision-making. At a time when ocean governance is becoming more integrated and more ambitious, it is increasingly important to ask what is still being overlooked. For ENDURE, that is where underwater cultural heritage comes in, and why attending the International Symposium — Transformative Ocean Science in Venice mattered.

Bringing together participants from science, policy, and society, the symposium, held from the 24th to 27th of March 2026, was designed to turn discussion into concrete outputs: a White Paper, a Policy Brief, and a Strategic Roadmap to help shape the future of European ocean research and governance. That made it an important forum for ENDURE. 

A view of the historic Arsenale Marina Militare in Venice, which hosted the final day of the symposium.

At its core, ENDURE is concerned with the sustainable preservation of underwater cultural heritage and with improving understanding of the natural and human-driven processes that threaten submerged archaeological sites. But our interest in Venice went beyond site preservation alone. The symposium addressed the larger question that also sits at the heart of ENDURE’s work: how do we govern the sea responsibly, and whose values are recognised in that process?

The symposium was built around the idea that science, ethics, and innovation must be brought together if Europe is to create a more resilient and responsible ocean future. Its themes included transdisciplinarity, observation, biodiversity, deep-sea exploration, and policy innovation. The symposium was not only shaped by keynote talks and high-level exchanges but also by sustained breakout working groups that formed the collaborative core of the event. These interdisciplinary groups were designed to identify the grand challenges facing ocean science, explore transformative methods and ethical frameworks for addressing them, and turn individual ideas into shared recommendations that would feed directly into the White Paper, Policy Brief, and Strategic Roadmap.

One of the six working groups.

It was in this setting that one of ENDURE’s key suggestions gained particularly strong support: underwater cultural heritage must be better integrated into maritime spatial planning. Bringing underwater cultural heritage into maritime spatial planning helps restore social dimensions of the sea that have long been neglected, as marine space has increasingly been treated as an economic and technical surface.

Participants at the symposium reviewing the top-voted priorities from one of the day’s breakout groups, including ENDURE’s suggestion that underwater cultural heritage should be better integrated into maritime spatial planning.

At the symposium, Ricardo Serrão Santos described this shift through the idea of three “ages of the ocean” in Western culture: a first age that feared the sea, a second that overtrusted it, and a third that must learn to understand, govern, and protect it more responsibly. 

Ricardo Serrão Santos describes the idea of "three ages of the ocean” in Western culture

Seen in this light, underwater cultural heritage has an important role to play. It can contribute not only to marine ecosystems, including as habitat in some contexts, but also to a fuller understanding of the sea as a space shaped by long-term human use, memory, identity, and culturally significant seascapes. In that sense, it strengthens the idea of marine space as a common good to be governed responsibly rather than merely allocated efficiently.

Another important insight was that many of the challenges faced in work on underwater cultural heritage are shared across other ocean fields, including difficulties with funding and long-term monitoring. Recognising those overlaps also underscored the importance of establishing more holistic and transdisciplinary ways of working across ocean research and governance to ensure that shared challenges are addressed more coherently.

For ENDURE, the symposium was valuable not only as a place of inspiration and exchange, but also as evidence that the case for integrating underwater cultural heritage into ocean governance is finding resonance beyond the heritage field. As cultural heritage begins to enter these discussions more visibly, it is important to build on that momentum and continue showing that recognising underwater cultural heritage is not only about safeguarding the past, but also about supporting more holistic governance and healthier seas.