heritage being lost to treasure hunters, an international conference was told yesterday.

Wrecks are a part of our inheritance that can't be replaced, just like rainforests, said director of the Maritime Museum Dr. Edward Harris.

And he warned Government it will be judged by future generations if it does not act. The present law only protects people who have a Government licence to salvage a wreck, Dr. Harris said.

Probably 90 percent of these have been "treasure hunters'', he added. As a result, a vast amount of heritage had been lost. "The law on underwater sites must be changed,'' he told the Underwater Archeology, Maritime History and Museums conference. "The new legislation must be an archaeological resources law and it must provide for the retention of our heritage in public hands.

"It must negate the mining of such sites for financial gain and the titillation of the curio-seeker.'' Dr. Harris praised Education Minister the Hon. Gerald Simons, who made an opening speech. "The Minister is no stranger to our world of history and preservation,'' Dr. Harris said. "It was he who was most instrumental in furthering a change of the law with regard to shipwrecks at Bermuda, but a general election in 1989 unfortunately caused changes in the ministries concerned with the matter, and little has happened since then.'' Dr. Harris' conservation message was echoed by acting curator of the Maritime Museum Mrs. Nan Godet. She told the meeting a wreck was "more than a sum of its parts''. It held valuable information for human civilisation, and if such information was not properly recorded and published, sites were left as if they had been bulldozed.

Objects taken from wrecks by treasure hunters could deteriorate, Mrs. Godet warned. "For the archeologist, it is not enough to gather the goodies. Our heritage should be beyond the reach of market forces, because it's priceless.

"Casual looting is no longer tolerated on land sites, and it should no longer be allowed underwater.'' Much of the historical evidence in Bermuda's waters has already disappeared, she added.

The conference, at the Southampton Princess hotel, is for members of the Council of American Maritime Museums and the North American Society for Oceanic History. It ends on Sunday.