aquanut
Bronze Member
All this debating over blowers vs dredging brought up an idea. I know that running a fairly large dredge along with the other equipment (boat/ship engines, generators and/or anything else that uses fuel) would be more costly but their use could be beneficial. A Salvor crew could anchor a dredge down current and downwind up to 100 feet from an ongoing blower operation to remove overburden from a shipwreck site. By using a wide suction head on the dredge inflow, a lot of the sand and silt that is blown up by the blowers, can be suctioned away from the working/search site and then pumped via high pressure outlet jets down current and downwind well away from the working/search site. This would help in several ways. First, it would help remove the blown up sand and silt from the working/search site so that it doesn't accumulate close by in what might be other potential search areas and also would help clear the water more quickly and increase visibility for the divers searching for targets.
Frank
Frank, Along this line of thinking, Dominic Addario tried to get the state to agree to letting him pump the overburden to the beach for renourishment. This also is a good idea...Of course the state turned him down so they could award contracts for millions to their good buddies and landowner friends for that purpose. The kick is that the sand they buy isn't even compatible with the beach. It quickly washes away, it's full of dirt, the turtle nests don't stand a chance, need I say more The times they use the offshore dredges, they run right thru any possible buried 'Cultural Heritage". Back to your original idea, Another anchored salvage boat with a good propwash would accomplish basicly the same thing. It would just double the cost of the salvage operation. Then the hurricanes could come and fill all of it back in for fun! As far as I'm concerned, this is all an exercise in bullcrap. It's just a way for the state to impede treasure hunting. Methods used in underwater archeology don't work in the dynamic surf zone.