‘It’s a Baltic problem’: the Swedish coastguards saving shipwrecks from looters

Objects are vanishing from historic wrecks as sport divers and criminal gangs loot well-preserved sunken ships

Among the rocky shores and wooden summerhouses of Dalaro, an exclusive Swedish summer retreat, there was little to indicate anything other than a typical summertime scene on the Stockholm archipelago.

It was only as the coastguard boat reached a discreet yellow buoy that there was any suggestion of the 17th-century shipwreck lying, preserved, 30 metres beneath it. STOP," read a sign. Marine cultural reserve."