Professor Donald Rothwell, of the Australian National University, has also warned of a major legal battle over the rights to the wreckage of Costa Concordia.
He says salvors were often granted entitlements to salvage property, including passengers' abandoned possessions, but this could be legally contested in the case of the Costa Concordia.
Captain Francesco Schettino has been allowed to leave jail but is under house arrest, blamed by his employer for risking the lives of more than 4,200 passengers and crew and half a billion dollars of ship in a reckless display of bravado.
Rescuers used explosives to blast through the maze of luxury cabins, bars and spas, fast losing hope of finding anyone alive inside the Costa Concordia, which lies semi-submerged on its side after being ripped open by rocks off a Tuscan island.
Dutch maritime services company SMIT said it was ready to start pumping fuel from the stricken liner as early as Wednesday once search operations for missing people have ended and they get the go-ahead from local authorities.
SMIT has been asked by the ship's owner and insurer to salvage up to 2,300 tonnes of fuel from the 114,500-tonne ship and clean up if fuel on the vessel starts to leak.
The giant cruiseship, a floating pleasure palace of bars, spas, state rooms and tennis courts, slid a little on Monday, threatening to plunge below the Mediterranean waters of the surrounding marine nature reserve.
This forced a brief suspension of rescue efforts, which were also halted overnight on Monday though searches were continuing through Tuesday night. A coastguard said they would go on until the entire ship had been checked.
The list of people still unaccounted for on Tuesday evening included 13 German, four French, five Italian and two American passengers, together with four crew members from Italy, India, Hungary and Peru.
Captain Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck by sailing too close to shore and abandoning ship before all his passengers and crew scrambled off.
He has denied the charges and told magistrates on Tuesday he believed he should be credited with saving "hundreds, if not thousands" of lives because he brought the ship close to shore after it hit a rock, lawyer Bruno Leporatti said.
A judge ruled he could be allowed out of jail on Tuesday and will be placed under house arrest at his home near Sorrento in southern Italy.
The skipper, who underwent toxicology tests, claims he did not abandon the ship while passengers were still aboard.
But newspaper Corriere della Sera released what it said was a recording of ship-to-shore radio communications in which the enraged coastguards repeatedly order him back on board.
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