A minute of silence to remember Sebastiano Tusa on Monday, 11 March at the UNESCO Ministerial meeting on Underwater Cultural Heritage in Malindi, Kenya.
Professor Tusa was on his way to the meeting to deliver the keynote speech when he was tragically killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash at Addis Ababa on Sunday.
The maritime archaeological world is in shock. Professor Tusa was an internationally renowned scholar and a champion of underwater archaeology in Italy and around the world. He was one of the drafters of the original UNESCO 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage and in 2004 was appointed as the first Superintendent of the Sea directing the Sicilian Soprintendenza del Mare marine archaeology team. More recently he was appointed Assesore for Cultural Heritage for the Government of Sicily. He directed archaeological projects in Italy, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Japan and Kenya and was the author of 700 archaeological publications.
He had great plans for future underwater research in Kenya.
We owe him so much. His passion and leadership will be greatly missed.