An ancient vessel, discovered by US oceanographer Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the wrecks of Titanic and Bismark, in the Black Sea's waters 30km north of the town of Varna in 2002, has been destroyed by fishing boats.

The news was delivered by Ilia Shtirkov, entrusted with heading the underwater expedition and unveiling the secrets of the 2000-year-old vessel, Bulgarian-language Monitor daily said on August 5 2008.

"We were so shocked when we saw what the trawls of fishing boats have done to the vessel. We could see the traces they have left," he was quoted as saying by Monitor.
The small submarine navigated by Shtirkov made two trips to the vessel. He reported that all the vessel's ancient possessions were scattered on the bottom of the sea. "It is all lost," he was quoted as saying by Monitor. 

Ballard's team had spotted the wreck of the ancient ship in 2002 - via satellite - in the waters around Kailakra cape, 35km north of Varna. He was working alongside a team from the Bulgarian Academy of Science.

The use of trawls by shipping boats is forbidden by law precisely because it causes serious and, in most cases, irreversible damage to the sea's environment. In this case trawling would also appear to have damaged Bulgaria's cultural heritage.

Despite the legal ban on trawling, nobody controls whether seamen are using trawls, scientist Hristina Angelova, the head of a project for protection of Thracian cultural heritage on the Black Sea, told Monitor.