Your logic is impecable, but your conclusions are flawed.  Sometimes that
happens.  They prepared the hell out of this one.  After something like 8
years of screwing around with it, how could it not be prepared.  Aside from
the possibility that the entire ship might decide to fall on somebody,
there's little left to harm the unsuspecteding diver, excluding of course,
the diver dumb enough to go where he's not ready to come back from.  The
ship was so prepared that a local dive shop operator I know, who served
aboard the ship, has already stated that what is left is not the ship he
knew.  He refers to it as a barge.

I really do wonder what concerns the PTB have.  The most obvious is the
navigation hazard.  I can't get excited about the risk, but the Coast Guard
gets paid to be excited about such things.  Another is, I suppose, a lack of
certainty that the ship will stay put rather than relocating on one of the
sanctuary's highly sensitive reefs.

Any way you look at it, I'll bet it will be a cold day in hades before the
sanctuary OKs another artificial reef, unless of course, the risk people
want one.

Lee
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Gerzner" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2002 6:18 AM
Subject: Re: [SCUBA-SE] Fw: Scuba Bobby's Top 10 Scuba News - Spiegel Grove


> Lee Bell wrote:
>
> > I'm with you.  I think the darned thing is considerably more interesting
> > with it's butt stuck in the sand and it's nose stuck in the air than it
ever
> > would be just sitting on the bottom as planned.  It seems, however, that
the
> > powers that be don't much care for the idea.  They clearly have an
> > underdeveloped sense of humor . . . or I simply don't understand the
> > magnatude or source of their concerns.
>
> Lee, ya kidding me?
>
> In the interests of preserving the lives of us unsuspecting innocent
> vict ..., I mean divers, who might be prepared to enter the wilds of
> this, likely unprepared, or perhaps underprepared, ship, why, the
> "authorities" (and their insurers) who had control of the ship are
> likely now to be sh*t scared that some likely gung ho lad, just
> recently released into the vagaries of scuba, is likely to lose his
> life there and that they are then likely to get their collective asses
> sued off'n 'em.
>
> Phew! That's some sentence.
>
> Let's face it, just ANYBODY can prove that the ship was underprepared,
> I mean, it didn't EVEN get sunk at the right time, in the right spot,
> in the right condition and at the right attitude.
>
> If I were contemplating suicide and needed to provide for lotsa
> dependents ...
>
> :-0 Maybe I should add, just to be on the safe side, that I have zero
dependents.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christian