The Red Sea is there so that we don’t have invisible walls - it is the SoT version of “Return to Combat Area”. If you stay, you sink and will not be able to prevent that from occurring. It’s purpose is to keep people in the play area. It’s purpose is not to provide place to dump loot so that nobody can get to it without the game trying to sink them for being out of bounds.
Currently, it is possible to sail your ship out far enough, that even by swimming, other players are teleported back before they can reach the floating loot.
If a player is going to lose loot and is willing to sink rather than fight, they should just surrender or scuttle their ship. They shouldn't be allowed to take the loot out of the play area.
An easy fix for this exploit: if a ship with loot sinks in the Red Sea, the loot is teleported or drifts on the "current" back to the play area so that it can be found by others or eventually respawn.
EDIT: I am a primarily solo sloop captain. I don't chase people and rarely hunt ships at all. So, all the comments about me whining about losing loot are pointless. It's not why I created this thread. The reason I started this thread was because of something another player said:
I work the edge of the map now as much as I can. If I am loaded with loot and no chance to get to an outpost I head to the "red sea". If it is between the attackers getting my loot, and the sea...the sea wins 100% of the time, every time!"
And:
In case you haven't noticed, its all the rage on the forums too. Plenty are using the map edge for like reasons.
So, this isn't about chasing, it's about the "if I can't have it, neither can you" mentality and taking advantage of the Red Sea to gain the satisfaction of preventing theft. It seems to me that this mentality is counter to the way the game was intended to work. If the devs wanted players to have a means of preventing theft by removing the loot from the game, they would've included a means to do that on the map.