Study of the influence of physical, chemical and biological conditions that influence the deterioration and protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage Manuel Bethencourt a, ⁎, Tomás Fernández-Montblanc b , Alfredo Izquierdo b , Manuel María González-Duarte c , Cristian Muñoz-Mas a a Department of Materials Science, Metallurgy Engineering and Inorganic Chemistry, International Campus of Excellence of the Sea (CEI·MAR), Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Uni- versity of Cadiz, Avda. República Saharaui s/n, 11510 Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain b Department of Applied Physics, International Campus of Excellence of the Sea (CEI·MAR), Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cadiz, Avda. República Saharaui s/n, 11510 Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain c Department of Biology, International Campus of Excellence of the Sea (CEI·MAR), Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cadiz, Avda. República Saharaui s/n, 11510 Puerto Real, Cádiz, Spain HIGHLIGHTS • A multidisciplinary approach is neces- sary to understand how the main ma- rine environmental variables can influence the formation, conservation or degradation of Underwater Cultural Heritage. • Following the guidelines of the UNESCO 2001 Convention, a holistic and interdis- ciplinary approach based on the devel- opment of four of its thirty-six Rules Rules was applied. • After monitoring these variables, we have established correlations between the environmental conditions and the degradation suffered by archaeological artifacts. • A non-destructive technique was devel- oped to obtain information from marine archaeological iron artefacts in historical shipwrecks. • The effectiveness of cathodic protection as a temporary measure for in situ con- servation was evaluated. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT abstract article info Article history: Received 9 May 2017 Received in revised form 1 September 2017 Accepted 1 September 2017 Available online xxxx Two wrecks related to the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) were studied. Following the guidelines of the UNESCO-2001 Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, a holistic and interdisciplinary approach based on the development of four of the thirty-six Rules of this international agreement was applied. A non- destructive survey technique was developed to obtain information from the scattered cannons and anchors with- out altering their condition (Rule 4). The work performed provided information about the origin of both wrecks, the Fougueux and the Bucentaure, two ships of the line of the French Navy, and allowed to characterize the state of Science of the Total Environment 613–614 (2018) 98–114 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: manuel.bethencourt@uca.es (M. Bethencourt). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.007 0048-9697/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science of the Total Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv