 After initially tolerating a "salvage" free-for-all, by 23 January 2007 the police branded the activity of scavengers "despicable", closed the beach, and announced that they would use powers not used for 100 years to force people to return goods they had salvaged without informing the authorities, pointing out that under the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 such actions constituted an offence equivalent to theft.In October 2007, salvagers who had reported their finds to the Receiver of Wreck were told they could keep what they found.Over the course of the next week, from 22 January, an attempt to remove the oil and other hazardous materials from "Napoli" was made.