Research On The Legal Problems Of Wreck Removal

The subject of wreck removal has been ignored by Chinese jurisconsults for a long time. Two reasons caused this phenomenon. One reason was that there was no legislation which applied to this field, whether in international conventions or in national laws; another reason was that the incidents of vessel sunken haven't caused serious damage before 1980's, so the jurisconsults haven't paid their attention to the problems thereof. But in recent years, as the capacity of the vessel and the shipment of dangerous cargos increased, when the vessel sinks, the incident will cause vast damage to navigation security and environment. Moreover, the expenditures of removing the wreck of sunken vessel are getting larger and larger. Therefore, how to resolve the new problems emerged in wreck removal becomes one of the main tasks of maritime lawmakers.This article is based on numerous materials that were collected from Chinese maritime authorities. Through hard researching work to these materials, the author epitomizes the main problems of wreck removal as follows:Who are responsible for the wreck removal; in which order they take the responsibility; and whether they can enjoy the Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims or not; the relationship among the parties on wreck removal; the law nature of the expenditures of wreck removal; the priority of the expenditures of wreck removal.Nowadays, there were no determinations to the problems mentioned above in Chinese maritime law field, and some problems even got contradictory answers in judicial practices. In order to resolve the above questions, the author firstly comparatively analyzes the conventions and foreign national laws on wreck removal, then answers these questions in Chinese law environment by referring the conventions and foreign national laws on wreck removal. After that, he argues the advantages and disadvantages of the resolvents thereof, and finally, puts forward the draft of law-making on wreck removal.In this article, the author argues that the relationship on wreck removal is very complicated and the Chinese legislations on this field are inadequate. Where when Chinese lawmakers constitute the new legislations of wreck removal, they should pay more attention to the practices thereof, and at the same time, keep up with the international trend of this subject. Only in this way, the problems on wreck removal can be resolved perfectly.