Abandoned Shipwrecks Act particular case of the salvage of the "Nuestra Señora de Atocha", an historic and culturally significant wreck off the coast of Florida, in which the State of Florida was unable to prevent illegal salvage operations due to a lack of a suitable law that would disallow it, spurred action at the federal level to address the situation. On April 29, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill (Abandoned Shipwrecks Act of 1987, Pub. L. 100-298, 102 Stat. 432) into law. The law provides that any wreck that lies embedded in a state's submerged lands is property of that state and
The World Without Us write something that people would read ... without minimizing the significance of what's going on, nor trivializing it, nor oversimplifying it." Richard Fortey compares the book to the works of Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery and E.O. Wilson, and writes that "The World Without Us" "narrowly avoids engendering the gloom-and-doom ennui that tends to engulf the poor reader after reading a catalogue of human rapacity". Mark Lynas in the "New Statesman" noted that "whereas most environmental books sag under the weight of their accumulated bad news, "The World Without Us" seems refreshingly positive". Demonstrating the optimism on the grim subject matter