Seeking Advice on Shipwreck Discovery

[WRECKING]

A guy I worked with, American, living in the UK. As a sat diver he was sent into a shipwreck’s accommodation, he had to retrieve a briefcase, the brief case was handcuffed to a man who was in the cabin he was said to be in, he cut the brief case of the man’s arm and returned to the bell. I worked with a lot of the crew that were on the DSV at that time and the story was told to me several times without asking it just came up in conversation, to this day no one knows what was in the briefcase. The ship was later covered in concrete, something intangible for sure and worth a great deal to someone, information/ knowledge is power to some. Are we getting anywhere?

"Worth a great deal to someone" is definitely "intangible".
I think we can classify treasure hunting in the same category as climbing the Himalaya and such. Some people are prepared to spend a lot of time and money for such things, with the only return being the intangible feeling one gets from doing it.
A word of warning though: One gets hooked on that intangible feeling by just attaining it once. The addiction is overpowering.

 

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[ARC]

A guy I worked with, American, living in the UK. As a sat diver he was sent into a shipwreck’s accommodation, he had to retrieve a briefcase, the brief case was handcuffed to a man who was in the cabin he was said to be in, he cut the brief case of the man’s arm and returned to the bell. I worked with a lot of the crew that were on the DSV at that time and the story was told to me several times without asking it just came up in conversation, to this day no one knows what was in the briefcase. The ship was later covered in concrete, something intangible for sure and worth a great deal to someone, information/ knowledge is power to some. Are we getting anywhere?

It was a rare bottle of Rum... And it was good.

 

[WRECKING]

I think it comes down to how big the oceans are compared to what is being released. If all 1,000 lead bars oxidized completely and drifted off around the world, how much would it raise the lead content of all the oceans? Add to that, all the nuclear debris from lost subs and ships, hazardous wastes, etc. Then you have to figure in all the oil, metals and other toxic substances that naturally cover the ocean floor or dissolve into the water. I remember several years ago when the BP oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. The amount of oil was great, but the analogy was that it was the equivalent to filling Dallas Cowboy's stadium with water and adding one soft drink can full of oil to the mix.

True enough, the dilution factor over the world's oceans is immense.
Not so for a shipwreck in the fishing grounds of a village or small island. The fishermen return again and again to the same fishing spot and catch the fish that live there. Fish like groupers eat other fish from within the area. If the other fish, like the wrasses I observed, are grazing on the algae growing on the lead, they accumulate the lead oxide in their body. Apex fish then accumulate the toxins from the accumulation from the other fish.
this is far reaching. Shellfish living on or near lead accumulate the lead poison. Octopuses eat the shellfish. Groupers eat the octopuses, you see where this leads.
The fisherman brings the grouper to the restaurant where you dine. You will feel nothing and an occasional dose of lead intake will not even make you sick.
However, the fisherman himself and his family who eat the poison fish often, will get chronic poisoning with disastrous effects.

Some years ago there was a big scandal in Japan, MINAMATO or something similar. The whole fishing village dying from chronic mercury poisoning, from eating seafood.

 

[WRECKING]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

Lead is less toxic, but probably the connections have just not been discovered yet.

 

[Magoopeter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

Lead is less toxic, but probably the connections have just not been discovered yet.

It is amazing that the UN in one convention aim to preserve underwater cultural heritage in situ, in another they want all shipwreck material from the sea remove from the sea are they Irish or what?

 

[MiddenMonster]

True enough, the dilution factor over the world's oceans is immense.Not so for a shipwreck in the fishing grounds of a village or small island. The fishermen return again and again to the same fishing spot and catch the fish that live there.

I agree, though the problem from things like hazardous waste and heavy metals is basically a localized problem such as you describe. Those are the wrecks that should be cleaned up. But even then, how much naturally occurring mercuric oxide and other heavy metals are constantly precipitating into the oceans? Santa Barbara was known for naturally occurring oil balls washing up on shore long before there was oil drilling out there. And remember, Gilbert Gottfried lost his job as the AFLAC duck when he made cannibal jokes about eating fish after the Tsunami in Japan. So I would think that anytime one eats fish or seafood there is a chance that they are also eating something they don't want to know about, both man made and naturally occurring.

 

[WRECKING]

I agree, though the problem from things like hazardous waste and heavy metals is basically a localized problem such as you describe. Those are the wrecks that should be cleaned up. But even then, how much naturally occurring mercuric oxide and other heavy metals are constantly precipitating into the oceans? Santa Barbara was known for naturally occurring oil balls washing up on shore long before there was oil drilling out there. And remember, Gilbert Gottfried lost his job as the AFLAC duck when he made cannibal jokes about eating fish after the Tsunami in Japan. So I would think that anytime one eats fish or seafood there is a chance that they are also eating something they don't want to know about, both man made and naturally occurring.

Here is what acute lead poisoning looks like:
The gastrointestinal signs, in order of frequency, were vomiting, anorexia, tender abdomen, diarrhea, and constipation. The neurologic signs, in order of frequency, were hysteria, convulsions, ataxia, blindness, and mydriasis. The finding of many nucleated erythrocytes without severe anemia was nearly pathognomonic for lead poisoning

 

[lukdiver]

Lead in ingot form not near the problem compared to 'hundreds of tons of mercury' on Spanish wrecks. This can go into the environment much more readily. Also they've recently found numerous (lots) of nuclear waste containers dumped off San Francisco and Los Angeles (more recently DDT containers). Cargos like ore are another dangerous pollutant: example is cargo ship off Pt. Conception (Southern California) with a copper ore cargo. Many of the WWII vessels were fueled with Bunker-C and the 'Jacob Luckenbach' off San Francisco was the source of the 'Mysterious San Mateo Oil Leak'. We dove it numerous times and gave the location/oil sample to a NOAA friend who provided it to the Coast Guard. They finally got a Sat-operation on her and removed 40,000gallons before running out of money. Speaking of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico I read 'natural seepage' was equivalent to a 'Exon Valdez' every year. There's plenty of pollution in the oceans, sometimes more concentrated due to man. Fish samples from the early 1800's have the same mercury levels as presently just from mercury washing into the ocean from alluvial deposits. My brother/I are doing our best to remove 'heavy metal' from the ocean like many on this chat board.

 

[TRG]

My brother/I are doing our best to remove 'heavy metal' from the ocean like many on this chat board.

A noble endeavor with the above mentioned intangible rewards as the minimum return for effort invested.

 

[islamoradamark]

Welcome back to Treasurenet Be all you can be and go for the gold it come in many different forms

 

[lukdiver]

Thanks, been stalled as our season is governed by the North Pacific Ocean and she's a bit-h.

 

[xaos]

Interesting thread..

First off...lead is not soluble in seawater..
Second..mercury is not soluble in seawater...

That is the REASON you still find it underwater? No?

Lead or mercury will be there for thousands of years...

lets say your dumb ass decides to "clean it up" and remove it from the seabed. Bring it topside...
You gonna abide by the environmental rules for recovery and disposal?

Where will you dispose of it...on land? Where it can evaporate

Your idiotic reasoning for recovering shipwrecks is to protect the Ocean from contamination....

save your same old bullshit argument for some other website like reddit...

 

[Honest Samuel]

Hire the best lawyer that you can afford on Shipwreck Discovery, and take their advice. Go diving and good luck. Make me happy and pay your taxes, or off to jail you may go.

 

[Boatlode]

Come on, you can tell us. Your secret is safe here, I promise.

 

[xaos]

I say NFT the wreck/wrecksite...

 

[SADS 669]

What the NFT does NFT stand for?……ha ha

 

[MiddenMonster]

What the NFT does NFT stand for?……ha ha

Non-Fungible Token, i.e. digital snake oil. It's the CBD of the blockchain world. It might be kind of tough to NFT a site, since NFT's tend to be used to show ownership of digital assets. But I suppose the research data for the wreck could be put in digital form, along with the ownership deed and be sold as an NFT that way.

 

[SADS 669]

MM, thanks for that explanation, still in the dark a bit, but if it needs a diver I like NFT… ha ha

 

[pepperj]

Interesting article about the lead. But.... worry about the archaeological value of 1000 identical lead bars and not one word about the poisoned seafood that we eat because of all that lead in the oceans. Fish chew on the lead. We eat the fish. Lead oxidizes constantly. The lead oxides are carried off by the currents and absorbed by all the creatures in the sea. Oysters and mussels absorb the poisonous lead oxide. We eat the oysters and mussels etc.

High-purity lead is produced in several stages, such as the dissolution of ore, smelting, separation of the alloy into component parts, alkali purification, and separation of each impurity. When many stages of purification are performed, it is needed to analyze a probe of the high-purity lead. The permissible maximum of radioactive impurities should not exceed 0,0000000001% (one ten-billion %) of the total mass. With this amount of radioactive impurities (or lower), lead can be used to protect high-precision equipment. However, even the most modern methods of direct elemental analysis do not allow to determine such small amounts of impurities in the main component ? lead.
Scientists of NUST MISIS laboratory for separation and concentration in chemical diagnostics of functional materials and objects of the environment, led by Professor Pyotr Fedotov, Sc.D. in Chemistry, suggested a new technology to separate impurities for further analysis. The experiment was conducted on the probes of ancient lead ? more than 1500 years old ingots. Centuries ago, this lead was mined by the ancient Romans in the mines, located on the territory of modern England. When transporting lead ore ship sank, and was discovered only at the end of the 20th century off the coast of France.
When the experiment was conducted, this ancient lead had already been in use by the National Center for Scientific Research (France) as a high-purity material, because for 1500 years a significant part of uranium and thorium naturally decayed, and the water protected the lead ingots from "sticking" of new radioactive impurities. Uranium and thorium were not detected in this lead, but it was assumed that the amount of impurities could simply be below the "visibility" of direct instrumental analysis, that is, below 0.00000001% (one hundred-million %).
Then, NUST MISIS scientists suggested a new technique of separating impurities for further analysis. With the help of the so-called planetary centrifuge and a system of two immiscible liquids (water and chloroform) containing special reagents, the lead sample was first dissolved in extra-pure nitric acid, and then the impurities were separated and concentrated.
This combined approach, based on the separation of impurities and their subsequent determination, allowed NUST MISIS scientists to determine uranium and thorium impurities with the required accuracy of 0.0000000001% (one ten-billion %). However, the content of uranium and thorium was below this level. Thus, it turns out that the ancient lead, mined by the ancient Romans and drawn from the sea only 1500 years later, is so pure that even with the most accurate methods of separation and analysis of impurities, they cannot be seen and measured.

 

[Honest Samuel]

Tax get that

You taken the words out of my mouth.