Thieves Who Steal Sunken Warships, Right Down to the Bolts

The first thought that came to my mind was that the scavengers are cleaning up a small part of the pollution in the oceans.

Our ability for self-deception is breath taking.

I think it's generally well-understood that when your remains rest in the ocean, you become fish food. The vast expanse of water itself is your tomb, not some little square on the floor.

Argue over the vehicle wreckage, but don't misplace your sentimentality.

I am writing this right now in literally the exact spot where thousands died during the Battle of Brooklyn in the Revolutionary War.

We subsequently moved on, they built Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO and a rather notable bridge here. It happens.

I think that another way of looking at this story is some 'god' miraculously tidying up the litter that humans have carelessly left at the bottom of the ocean for one reason or another. In this magic universe the mystery tidy-up persons should be thanked for doing such a thorough job, leaving not so much as a bolt behind.

It is all so much easier if the human remains part is conveniently ignored.

The only difference is the amount of time that has passed.

It's not appropriate to wax indignant about remains that may have all but disintegrated into unrecognizable mud. These are not organized places, like the parks on land with paths that people walk.

Consider the wreckage of the Titanic:

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

No one can simply swin to the bottom of the ocean to pay their respects.

Most sunken ships, they just sit there and nobody wants to take responsibility and maintain them so that no oil and fuel gets into the ocean. Furthermore, there is little to see. Sure there is some historical information on them but we should save those otherwise the ocean destroys them (surely but slowly).

If those sunken ships were properly maintained, I would also call those scrapers thieves because they take something that belongs to someone else and it has value to them. But since most are just sitting there, waiting to slowly decay.

The only things those scrapers should be held responsible for, is when they damage a tank or something like that which pollutes the ocean (and there should be resources on how to do that safely). But then again, those fuel tanks will leak at some point anyway (they won't last forever) and it should be our responsibility (as humans) to make sure that does not happen.

Who cares? If you really cared about that historical information, you'd salvage it and put it on display in a museum. "Historical information" isn't doing anyone any good sitting on the ocean floor.

>And who knows what stuff is on the ships (oil, fuel) that isn't being properly cleaned up, just dumped into the ocean?

Again, who cares? If you cared, you'd clean it up properly yourself, instead of just leaving it there to leak out into the ocean. The USS Arizona is still visibly leaking diesel fuel out into the water, and no one's doing anything about that, so it's hypocritical for you to complain about this.

This whole subject is just fraught with silly, misplaced sentimentality. I do personally agree that oil and fuel should be properly cleaned up, but we don't do that now, so it obviously isn't a valid concern. I do agree that historical information should be preserved, but we don't do that now (by leaving it inaccessible to the general public on the ocean floor in a remote part of the Pacific), so it obviously isn't a valid concern.

These ships are maritime war graves. The remains were of men that weren't vikings or ancient Egyptians. They were our grandparents generation. That's pretty damned recent.

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from-nuc...

The overall picture seems to be that thousands of people will get cancer as a result of fallout from nuclear testing, but millions of people get cancer for other reasons, so it's not a major effect.

Back at the time, there was not very much requirement for nuclear safety/contamination prevention... so if you want steel definitely free from non-natural radiation you'll need 1942 or earlier steel.