43 U.S.C. § 2101
Section 2101 · Findings
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 23 court decisions — leading case Fairport International Exploration, Inc. v. Shipwrecked Vessel Known as the Captain Lawrence (1997)
Most recently applied in 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels, LLC v. Unidentified Wrecked & Abandoned Vessell (July 2017)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The Congress finds that—
(a) States have the responsibility for management of a broad range of living and nonliving resources in State waters and submerged lands; and
(b) included in the range of resources are certain abandoned shipwrecks, which have been deserted and to which the owner has relinquished ownership rights with no retention.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Short Title
Section 1 of Pub. L. 100–298 provided that: “This Act [enacting this chapter] may be cited as the ‘Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987’.”