Michigan Compiled Laws, Chapter 324. Natural Resources and Environmental Protection § 324.76101

(a) “Abandoned property” means an aircraft; a watercraft, including a ship, boat, canoe, skiff, raft, or barge; the rigging, gear, fittings, trappings, and equipment of an aircraft or watercraft; the personal property of the officers, crew, and passengers of an aircraft or watercraft; and the cargo of an aircraft or watercraft, which have been deserted, relinquished, cast away, or left behind and for which attempts at reclamation have been abandoned by owners and insurers. Abandoned property also means materials resulting from activities of historic and prehistoric Native Americans.

(b) “Bottomlands” means the unpatented lake bottomlands of the Great Lakes.

(c) “Committee” means the underwater salvage and preserve committee created in section 76103.  1

(d) “Great Lakes” means lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, St. Clair, and Superior.

(e) “Great Lakes bottomlands preserve” means an area located on the bottomlands of the Great Lakes and extending upward to and including the surface of the water, which is delineated and set aside by rule for special protection of abandoned property of historical value, or ecological, educational, geological, or scenic features or formations having recreational, educational, or scientific value. A preserve may encompass a single object, feature, or formation, or a collection of several objects, features, or formations.

(f) “Historical value” means value relating to, or illustrative of, Michigan history, including the statehood, territorial, colonial, and historic, and prehistoric native American periods.

(g) “Mechanical or other assistance” means all humanmade devices, including pry bars, wrenches and other hand or power tools, cutting torches, explosives, winches, flotation bags, lines to surface, extra divers buoyancy devices, and other buoyance devices, used to raise or remove artifacts.

(h) “Recreational value” means value relating to an activity that the public engages in, or may engage in, for recreation or sport, including scuba diving and fishing.