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Hadland Keith writes in regards to John Heimann: > > Now I don't want to flame anyone, but here we have a wreck which has hardly > been dived and which is out of range of most divers, so why do we feel a > need to take 'artifacts' from it? At the moment there seems to be only one > skipper who knows the numbers for it, so couldn't there just be some sort of > 'no taking' policy, so that all this stuff is left for other people to see? > I know this may sound like some sort of 60s hippy ideal, but I get > extremely annoyed by some divers I know of who will rip porthole after > porthole off a wreck only to leave them rotting in their back garden. Some > guys go down tooled up for destruction rather than exploration - chisels, > air tools, hacksaws, hammers - not only do these prevent other people from > seeing the wreck as it should be - they also disturb all of the life that's > built up on these wrecks in the years they've been down there. > > Like I said, this isn't a flame - more a question of philosophy. Some people > may have perfectly valid reasons for removing objects - and some things > (like bells!) should probably be removed for their own protection - but why > do we need to rip everything else off? To prove that we've been there? > We've already trashed everything in 'normal' air range - do we really have > to do the same to the new deeper wrecks? Am I back on rec.scuba? I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks this wreck or any wreck in the 160-200ft range is beyond sport divers does not belong on this mailing list. If that is your belief, please, go back to rec.scuba. This listing is for divers interested in technical diving. it seems that a lot of postings lately have been nonsense and nothing to do what-so-ever with technical diving. Divers take artifacts for different reasons: to display, to preserve, to identify, etc.. As you state, this wreck (supposedly) is beyond most divers ability. You make a perfect point as to why those artifacts SHOULD be removed: so divers like you and the non diving public CAN see the wreck or at least a part of it. wreck divers that would pull portholes off and "leave them rotting in the back garden" is a foolish notio. wreck divers don't just leave them lying around. They are cleaned and preserved! Go to Beneath the sea or Boston Sea Rovers shows. You'll see some great artifacts. If you want to save the anemones, that's fine. But don't expect to show them to your children 10-20 years from know. The sea is a harsh environment, and when the timbers and bulkheads finally rot away, what will those anemones cling to? I'd rather kill off a few anemones to show a nice porthole to friends and family than watch that porthole disappear forever when the wreck collapses. and they become buried in the sand. Maybe for wrecks in the great lakes, where deterioration appears not to take place can I see a policy of "no taking", but that makes no sense for the ocean. If NOAA has it's way, NO ONE will ever see a piece of the Monitor forever. They'd rather let it rot away than remove pieces to be put in a museum. John Lydon jlydon@re*.mg*.ha*.ed*
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