MI couple running out of time to prove they found Great Lakes' oldest shipwreck | Hacker News Reader

MI couple running out of time to prove they found Great Lakes' oldest shipwreck

lansingstatejournal.com

41 pointsrmason35 comments

If the firewall blocks you: https://archive.is/dDjOP

Had to scroll all the way to the end to find the "running out of time" bit:

> That "something good" needs to happen soon. The Liberts said they're feeling their age. His dive pals are, too. They can’t keep diving. And the couple can't afford more court battles for salvage rights, they said. They said they expect no treasure, no material benefits at all from their find. They just want, in their lifetimes, to see the wreckage identified and protected.

> They’d like to be assured that this exciting and very early slice of Michigan history doesn’t stay lost in the sand under Lake Michigan. I’m on board with that.

Read the whole article (quite a fascinating story!) yet this key detail is still unclear to me: why is the state fighting the divers on this? What do they have to gain, or to lose, in the matter? If it is some historically insignificant ship, as the state claims, what's the risk in letting the divers salvage it?

Yes that part seemed crazy to me as well. Is it just some power tripping person who likes to prevent anything from happening? Is there some sort of environmental risk? Are they worried the couple who found it are not qualified enough to safely and correctly perform the salvage? My guess has to be the last one being hopeful it’s not just some attempt to block for the sake of it. Maybe they want it removed and documented to certain standards and they don’t feel these people are qualified to do that. The couple does seem to have good intentions though so I would like to see something happen before they pass even if another group does the salvage.

As I read it, nobody is necessarily in the wrong. I get that they want to be able to confirm this while they're young enough to dive it, but at the same time that may not be the best thing for the wreck itself.

I am guessing you're correct and it's the latter - that they don't feel like the couple and their associates are qualified/equipped to mess around with it if it /is/ archeologically significant. The amount of effort to protect the single piece they were allowed to bring up gives some idea of the kind of sustained effort of many highly trained people it would involve.

Now, if the state believes the raised piece to be from an 1800s fishing vessel as apparently the one expert says, it's also possible that they just don't think it's worth the effort and expense, and that the divers are misinterpreting the wreck site and seeing what they want to see.

Conversely, if it did believe it was the genuine article, there may not be the funds to do an operation like this immediately. Archeological sites are generally fairly stable when left in place, so for an instituation waiting 10 years to make a move on this isn't a big deal, and there are likely other sites that need to excavated before they're destroyed for various reasons - but if you're an aging couple and this is your big dream, then there's an urgency here that may easily be considered reckless if you're evaluating purely based on the best way to approach an archeological site, more so than a sense of romance and adventure.

> When I ran short of air at the wreck, Tom would swim over and hold out his backup breathing line, known to divers as a "reserve regulator." I'd catch a breath to stay down longer.

Taking breaths off a scuba tank at depth is something only someone trained as both a diver and freediver should do. I don’t get the impression the reporter is either. Tom seems a bit cavalier.

I know very little about either of these worlds -- can you explain why that is such a dangerous thing to do? Is it just that you might run out when you don't expect to?

Breathing pressurized air from a tank while you're under pressure in the water can dissolve extra nitrogen into your system, as you ascend the nitrogen can bubble out in your blood stream causing nitrogen narcosis aka the bends https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_sickness

Nitrogen narcosis is a different thing than the bends.

That's not the problem with this. When you inhale from a scuba regulator, you're breathing in air at ambient pressure, which means an extra one atmosphere of pressure at 30 feet depth. As surrounding pressure drops, that air will expand proportionally. If you take a deep breath and then ascend, the air can overinflate your lungs and cause serious damage. SCUBA divers are trained to exhale while ascending to avoid this, but freedivers tend to hold their breath.

I don't know how you could hold your breath with double the volume in lungs. That at only one atmosphere.

Not to mention your ears. Part of releasing air as you ascend is to help your ears adjust. Its only natural. Same with descending.

I have seen alot of minor injury as a summer dive boat mate. Mostly blood vessels burst in the eyes from people holding their breath ascending..

I saw a guy pop out of the water like a cork because the ran out of air. Of course he said he was Navy UDT. Didn't need a buddy. Steel doubles and a speargun. Thankfully nobody got hurt.

NAUI Diver with over 45 dives in Hatteras.

Lung over expansion injury if he holds his breath on ascent like many free divers naturally do. He was taking compressed air breaths at depth and then ascending. If you fill your lungs at 33ft and ascend, the gas will double in volume at the surface, causing tons of damage and bleeding.

What? No, not at all. That’s a technique that’s taught at the most basic levels of even open water diving. It might be not as ideal if you’re near maximum depths for a general air mix where you might start to run into nitrogen saturation (say longer than 10 mins) at 100+ ft depth, but in the article they were down what seems like no deeper than 15 ft. You could pretty much stay down all day that shallow.

It’s standard training, at least with my NAUI knowledge to practice rescue breathing with another divers spider. My instructor added a few curveballs in that he’d mess up my tank, make me take it off and fix it while without a mask with my eyes closed and breathing off a fellow student’s tank. Nothing to it.

Edit: ok I see you mean as the reporter ostensibly not having any dive training, yeah, probably a bit inadvisable, but they dove with someone with experience and only at shallow depths, the danger is probably a bit overblown after a short amount of instruction. You’re not gonna get bent at 15 ft.

It’s not getting bent, it’s lung over expansion injury from taking a compressed air breath at depth and ascending afterward as a free diver. Yes, you could explain the danger to him, but people panic and forget.

Except in that trained scuba situation, both divers ascend together while still breathing. If you are freediving it is possible to forget to do this, after getting air from a scuba diver.

> Tom seems a bit cavalier.

We should all aspire to be more like Tom.

The article specifies that the wreckage in question was 10 feet below the surface. Is that deep enough to matter?

If you took a deep breath and held it on the way up, maybe. Otherwise, probably not.

Yes, the fractional pressure change is greatest near the surface, so shallow water is the most dangerous region for lung damage if you hold your breath on ascent.

You know what you’re talking about.

Wow, TIL! Thank you for sharing!

there are community center pools deeper than that, so no.

The difference is this: in a community centre pool, a diver doesn't give you compressed air to breath at the bottom of the pool.

The thing the commentor above is concerned about is pulmonary barotrauma, a.k.a. "burst lung". Between 10 feet depth and the surface the gas in your lungs will expand by 30%. If you took a deep breath at 10 feet deep, and held it, then that expansion can cause rupture of the alveoli.

For this reason one of the first things you are told (or should be told!) in a scuba diving course is to breath continuously, i.e. never hold your breath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow-water_blackout

As an experienced scuba diver and freediver, I would never mix the two and take air from a scuba diver while freediving…. The habit of holding my breath on ascent while freediving is really ingrained, and I think it is very likely to forget to exhale when doing this.

This is extremely interesting, but reading the article left me wondering: why are experienced underwater archaeologists not involved in this? The only mention of any seems to be DRASSM, French government archaeologists who presumably had to come over at great expense. In the two locations I've lived and dived there have been underwater archaeology societies (Save Our Shipwrecks in Ontario, and the Nautical Archaeology Society in the UK) whose would normally by extremely keen to survey a wreck like this.

I'll also point out that if you don't involve people with this training, you can do a lot of harm. Items that have been submerged for a long time, especially in mud, can degrade rapidly once they're brought into air. Archaeologists will typically have prepared baths to submerge items in once they're brought up. There can be a lot of information preserved in those wrecks: for example, one of our best sources of information about English longbows are the examples brought up from the wreck of the Mary Rose.

There's one massive red flag in this article that screams "this needs archaeologists involved": the fact that they took the reporter diving to the wreck. It sounds like this was his first dive. As others have pointed out, there is some risk of injury, even if they properly briefed him, since he's going to be too distracted by the wreck to focus on things like "breath continuously". But there's also a lot of risk to the wreck. Even qualified divers have a bad habit of kicking wrecks (and reefs) and doing damage.

There's also the fact that the only photograph in that article is take from the surface using a cell phone. I would not say that underwater photography is a priority for me, but even I have the kit to take photos while diving that would be a lot better than those take from the surface. So why don't these guys? Especially in 10 feet of water where the lighting conditions are so benign.

I love the islands in northern Lake Michigan, especially the line that goes from Washington Island in WI to Rock Island north to St. Martin and then to Summer Island. It's always seemed so remote. I assume these are the "Huron Islands"? I've never seen them referred to as such and when I search for them I get links to islands in Lake Superior, which are also interesting but not the same.

I'm interested in the book now. Even if it turns out not to be the Griffon, it's an interesting story.

Whether this pans out as the oldest wreck in the Great Lakes or not it sounds pretty cool. Wreck diving in the Great Lakes is great. If you're into that kind of thing it's worth the trip.

They've got (what they - and the French archeologists - think is) the bowsprit. Can't dendrochronology or carbon dating resolve the age of the timber?

I think what was insinuated is that it is just a common piece of wood found on many old boats. So it could still date back ages but does not prove they found the Griffen boat.

Fair enough, but they could exclude the theory if the timber dates newer than expected.

Is this link mistaken? As far as I can tell it points to the usatoday homepage, not a specific story?

Our software replaced the submitted URL https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/michiga... because it listed https://www.usatoday.com/ as its canonical URL. Fixed now. Thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com