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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

Vixen said:
Obvs it doesn't have to be the same divers sent to do surveying. You do know several naval team went down?
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Sending technical divers* into the often tight enclosed spaces of sunken ships is a very hazardous operation indeed. Tech divers are burdened with significantly more equipment that regular scuba divers, and currents/thermals in cold-water open oceans can be vicious, and the divers have to wear bulky dry suits, which not only hamper mobility but also are at risk of tearing on jagged metal or broken glass - and if a diver were to have his/her drysuit ripped open at 80m in the Baltic Sea, that diver would almost certainly die from hypothermia (a diver cannot simply shoot up to the surface after diving at that sort of depth: a series of safety stops (to minimise the chance of contracting deadly bends) would easily require up to 2 hours extra in the water in a graduated surfacing).

Another factor here is that bottom time for any diver at 80m would be 20 minutes at most - meaning that the divers would have had to rush and expend extra energy (something you never ever want to do when diving: the CO2 build-up can kill you) if they wanted to enter the wreck, manhandle a dead body through small gaps, exit the wreck, and start off towards the surface, all in that shortened period of time.

Yet another factor is a more gruesome one. After a couple of weeks in water - even cold water - a body starts accumulating decomposition gases in its abdomen and thorax. In an enclosed wreck, leaving the body with negative buoyancy. if the body is trapped within the wreck it would probably be especially difficult to extricate

I've scuba dived at 32m at Scapa Flow in Orkney, wearing a mandatory drysuit. I dived close to WWI wrecks, and the currents were fierce. I wouldn't have dreamt of putting myself in danger by actually entering a wreck, and no dive supervisor would suggest such an action. On the other hand, I've dived a WWII wreck at 31m off the coast of Sinai in the Red Sea, wearing nothing but a thin rash vest in effectively zero-current conditions, which allowed be literally to swim through the hold of the ship and view the lines of supplies (including motorbikes jeeps, and tons of ammunition) that were on their way to our army in North Africa before the ship was sunk by a German aircraft.


* Technical diving is any diving below around 38m depth: below that depth, the diver is forced to breath a special tri-mix of gases which is not available to regular scuba divers. And almost all tech divers use rebreather equipment, which allows them to optimise their oxygen usage by reusing unspent oxygen, but it's cumbersome equipment - all the more so when diving at 80m, because the divers would have to be carrying spare tanks of tri-mix and oxygen with them as well.
 
Vixen said:
She actually visited the site of the wreck. Being with Der Speigel and a broadcasters, she became privy to a lot a of stuff, as Germany didn't sign the Estonia Treaty.
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But as we discussed in one of the previous chapters, Rabe alleges fact without providing evidence for the fact. This is a red flag for the claim. Regardless of whether she supplies evidence for other factual allegations regarding other topics she has reported, we are not obliged to accept some particular allegation of fact without testable evidence. You propose to cure this problem by imagining that Rabe must have suitable evidence because she was personally present whereas others were not. That turns logic on its head. Someone who is personally present at an accident site is in a unique position to provide evidence for claims associated with the accident. We expect more evidence from people who were actually there, not less.

Now it is possible to draw conclusions about Rabe's journalistic integrity from such behavior as making unevidenced claims. But that's not necessary if all we want is to assign weight to the unevidenced claim. The claim is not supported by evidence, therefore we weigh it accordingly unconvincing and move on. Imagining that Rabe possesses substantive evidence by virtue of her involvement, but that she simply chooses not to share it in support of a relevant claim, is pure wishful thinking. The more parsimonious interpretation is that despite her direct involvement, the claim in question is more likely to be out of whole cloth.
 
LondonJohn said:
Yet another factor is a more gruesome one. After a couple of weeks in water - even cold water - a body starts accumulating decomposition gases in its abdomen and thorax. In an enclosed wreck, leaving the body with negative buoyancy. if the body is trapped within the wreck it would probably be especially difficult to extricate
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This doesn't happen in the Great Lakes, which famously never give up their dead. That's where the bulk of my large-hull sailing experience occurred. There are diveable wrecks that contain trapped, preserved corpses, notably "Old Whitey" in the wreck of SS Kamloops.

However, the recovery of human remains from underwater wreckage is a specialized skill. When survey or rescue divers encounter remains, specialized dive teams must be called in. The corps of qualified divers shrinks when the remains must be recovered in such a way as to preserve forensic medical evidence in the remains. Back in my more active theater days, I spent a lot of time on the set of "O" in Las Vegas, where my friend was the scenery shop foreman. Every person who works backstage at "O"—including my friend—is rescue-diver certified. But they have protocols for calling in other divers if they should ever need to recover a fatality.

Recovering corpses from the interior of the wreckage of MS Estonia would simply not have been a casual enterprise. As we've discussed already many times, the danger and expense would have to be weighed against the expectation of evidence to be obtained thereby.
 
JayUtah said:
This doesn't happen in the Great Lakes, which famously never give up their dead. That's where the bulk of my large-hull sailing experience occurred. There are diveable wrecks that contain trapped, preserved corpses, notably "Old Whitey" in the wreck of SS Kamloops.

However, the recovery of human remains from underwater wreckage is a specialized skill. When survey or rescue divers encounter remains, specialized dive teams must be called in. The corps of qualified divers shrinks when the remains must be recovered in such a way as to preserve forensic medical evidence in the remains. Back in my more active theater days, I spent a lot of time on the set of "O" in Las Vegas, where my friend was the scenery shop foreman. Every person who works backstage at "O"—including my friend—is rescue-diver certified. But they have protocols for calling in other divers if they should ever need to recover a fatality.

Recovering corpses from the interior of the wreckage of MS Estonia would simply not have been a casual enterprise. As we've discussed already many times, the danger and expense would have to be weighed against the expectation of evidence to be obtained thereby.
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Ot: If you ever publish your autobiography, put me down for a signed copy!
 
LondonJohn said:
I've dived a WWII wreck at 31m off the coast of Sinai in the Red Sea, wearing nothing but a thin rash vest in effectively zero-current conditions, which allowed be literally to swim through the hold of the ship and view the lines of supplies (including motorbikes jeeps, and tons of ammunition) that were on their way to our army in North Africa before the ship was sunk by a German aircraft.
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SS Thistlegorm? I've dived on that.
 
Disbelief said:
Here is the thing, I am not an expert. I have working knowledge of a variety of steels, and specifically there uses in the automotive world. I am pointing out that you refuse to admit that you have no idea what you're talking about and try to fool people on this forum that you do.
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I have not tried to fool anybody about anything.
 
LondonJohn said:
Sending technical divers* into the often tight enclosed spaces of sunken ships is a very hazardous operation indeed. Tech divers are burdened with significantly more equipment that regular scuba divers, and currents/thermals in cold-water open oceans can be vicious, and the divers have to wear bulky dry suits, which not only hamper mobility but also are at risk of tearing on jagged metal or broken glass - and if a diver were to have his/her drysuit ripped open at 80m in the Baltic Sea, that diver would almost certainly die from hypothermia (a diver cannot simply shoot up to the surface after diving at that sort of depth: a series of safety stops (to minimise the chance of contracting deadly bends) would easily require up to 2 hours extra in the water in a graduated surfacing).

Another factor here is that bottom time for any diver at 80m would be 20 minutes at most - meaning that the divers would have had to rush and expend extra energy (something you never ever want to do when diving: the CO2 build-up can kill you) if they wanted to enter the wreck, manhandle a dead body through small gaps, exit the wreck, and start off towards the surface, all in that shortened period of time.

Yet another factor is a more gruesome one. After a couple of weeks in water - even cold water - a body starts accumulating decomposition gases in its abdomen and thorax. In an enclosed wreck, leaving the body with negative buoyancy. if the body is trapped within the wreck it would probably be especially difficult to extricate

I've scuba dived at 32m at Scapa Flow in Orkney, wearing a mandatory drysuit. I dived close to WWI wrecks, and the currents were fierce. I wouldn't have dreamt of putting myself in danger by actually entering a wreck, and no dive supervisor would suggest such an action. On the other hand, I've dived a WWII wreck at 31m off the coast of Sinai in the Red Sea, wearing nothing but a thin rash vest in effectively zero-current conditions, which allowed be literally to swim through the hold of the ship and view the lines of supplies (including motorbikes jeeps, and tons of ammunition) that were on their way to our army in North Africa before the ship was sunk by a German aircraft.


* Technical diving is any diving below around 38m depth: below that depth, the diver is forced to breath a special tri-mix of gases which is not available to regular scuba divers. And almost all tech divers use rebreather equipment, which allows them to optimise their oxygen usage by reusing unspent oxygen, but it's cumbersome equipment - all the more so when diving at 80m, because the divers would have to be carrying spare tanks of tri-mix and oxygen with them as well.
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Small point: divers to the Estonia reported that the bodies were still virtually intact. This is due to the very low temperature at that depth.
 
JayUtah said:
But as we discussed in one of the previous chapters, Rabe alleges fact without providing evidence for the fact. This is a red flag for the claim. Regardless of whether she supplies evidence for other factual allegations regarding other topics she has reported, we are not obliged to accept some particular allegation of fact without testable evidence. You propose to cure this problem by imagining that Rabe must have suitable evidence because she was personally present whereas others were not. That turns logic on its head. Someone who is personally present at an accident site is in a unique position to provide evidence for claims associated with the accident. We expect more evidence from people who were actually there, not less.

Now it is possible to draw conclusions about Rabe's journalistic integrity from such behavior as making unevidenced claims. But that's not necessary if all we want is to assign weight to the unevidenced claim. The claim is not supported by evidence, therefore we weigh it accordingly unconvincing and move on. Imagining that Rabe possesses substantive evidence by virtue of her involvement, but that she simply chooses not to share it in support of a relevant claim, is pure wishful thinking. The more parsimonious interpretation is that despite her direct involvement, the claim in question is more likely to be out of whole cloth.
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That's not true. Braidwood acquired samples directly from the MS Estonia, from a dive. These were sent off to independent metallurgy laboratories, some in the USA and others in Germany. These same laboratories are used by the police. So it is quite mistaken to claim her findings were untested or 'wishful thinking'.
 
Edited. I thought I'd quoted a post when I hadn't so it didn't seem to make much sense.
 
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JayUtah said:
This doesn't happen in the Great Lakes, which famously never give up their dead. That's where the bulk of my large-hull sailing experience occurred. There are diveable wrecks that contain trapped, preserved corpses, notably "Old Whitey" in the wreck of SS Kamloops.

However, the recovery of human remains from underwater wreckage is a specialized skill. When survey or rescue divers encounter remains, specialized dive teams must be called in. The corps of qualified divers shrinks when the remains must be recovered in such a way as to preserve forensic medical evidence in the remains. Back in my more active theater days, I spent a lot of time on the set of "O" in Las Vegas, where my friend was the scenery shop foreman. Every person who works backstage at "O"—including my friend—is rescue-diver certified. But they have protocols for calling in other divers if they should ever need to recover a fatality.

Recovering corpses from the interior of the wreckage of MS Estonia would simply not have been a casual enterprise. As we've discussed already many times, the danger and expense would have to be weighed against the expectation of evidence to be obtained thereby.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is a hazardous and dangerous venture requiring great skill. However, divers did make their way through the interior of the vessel to search for the briefcase belonging to Capt Piht, which was in the room of Voronin, IIRC. So when prosecutors or investigators require evidence, if they have the skilled manpower and specialised equipment, they will employ them.
 
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