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Jim, Relax and get your facts from accurate sources, not just from a TV news segment. $20 million is more than the entire yearly budget for the administration for all of NOAA's marine sanctuaries (about 14 million in 1997) and was the estimate for bringing the wreck up which is obviously not realistic. While you and a few other tax payers who have the skills to visit the site would prefer to leave the artifacts where they are, consider for a moment that on any given day there are more tax payers who visit the Monitor collection at the museum than the total number of divers who have ever visited the site. Civil War buffs (taxpayers too) probably only out number tech divers about 5,000 to 1 (guestimate). Last year's expedition was used to a large extent for the Navy's salvage divers to train on a new mixed gas surface supplied system. Perhaps they should have just spent tax payer dollars on sand dives instead... The work up dives are primarily for NOAA/NURC/NURP divers who have seen that open circuit provides a more cost effective method of conducting marine archeology than surface supplied or submersible operations under certain conditions. Should this rationale offend you I would suggest that you could save more tax dollars by squawking at Wood's Hole, Harbour Branch, Scripp's, etc. The intital training for the divers involved in this year's project was provided at no cost to you or any other tax payers and involved significant time and expense on the part of many volunteers. Perhaps instead of a rational methodology of training, they should just have jumped in and dove the Monitor without work up dives. Judging by your comments, I take it that you are completely against the recovery of any artifacts... and have never been involved in any project that has recovered artifacts... and thus support a current resolution before the UN that would effectively make it very difficult for anyone to dive most wrecks. Personally, I prefer to see the artifacts where they are, but I also recognise that I am not the only tax payer who would have an interest in such things. And just maybe an artifact found today sitting on the sand was not there yesterday and will not be there tomorrow... So instead of ransacking all marine museums to throw all the collections back into the sea, perhaps we can chill a little and see that your $0.02 and my $0.02 amounts to a total of $0.04... Personally, I like the Monitor web site. I like your trimix site too and have found it useful. I would suspect, however, that there may be more people who are more interested in the Monitor site due to its significance to naval history and the Civil War. Not on this list perhaps, but the world is a little bigger than techdiver@aquanuat.com. Regards, John -----Original Message----- From: Jim Cobb <cobber@ci*.co*> To: John Chluski <undersea@ga*.ne*>; Andrew Cohen <Andrew.Cohen@no*.go*>; Tech Diver <techdiver@aquanaut.com> Date: Saturday, August 14, 1999 5:28 PM Subject: Re: Fwd:Update on August Expedition to Monitor NMS >Hey, John, I don't know about you, but I am a diver and I prefer to see >my artifacts underwater and not on dry land. And it is particularly >galling to see $20,000,000.00 of my tax dollars going into the "eliminate >the monitor" project. By the way, that web site is really lame, glad to >see that they are not pissing away the money on a wasteful decent web >site. They are saving it to be used for rigorous "work-up dives" to the >Proteus. Oh, my what scientific research. What a scam. Another >pork-barrel project to benefit the few and paid for by the many. > > Jim > >Sender: John Chluski Date: 8/14/99 4:33 AM -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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