S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald
- Thread starter AquaHump
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OP
Ya, what really cought my eye was how people said you should not dive on it becouse it is a grave site, I dont know if I like that becouse I have visted lots of grave sites on land. If they stop people on one wreck then who is to say thay can't call recks where people die a grive site and stop diving on those wrecks?Diver0001:
This TV show has an excellent documentation on the Fitzgerald. By agreement, the Canadian and US government has banned any diving on this wreck. And, at this depth, this is beyond even technical open circuit scuba.
AquaHump:
Soggy
Contributor
BILLB:
Terrance Tysall and Michael Zee dived the wreck on open circuit several years ago: Here's the story.
Here are some more threads on the subject found by searching for "Edmund Fitzgerald"
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=48167&highlight=edmund+fitzgerald
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=34064&highlight=edmund+fitzgerald
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=14638&highlight=edmund+fitzgerald
AquaHump:
We, as divers, are collectively to blame for "no dive" policies. As a group we simply cannot be trusted to show proper respect to wrecks designated as grave sites, even when asked. Teh Edmund Fitzgerald is also a special case because any idiotic thing someone were to do on that wreck would be front page news all over North America. The possible repercussions for wreck diving in general (read extra controls) could potentially be quite unwelcome. If you ask me it's better the way it is.
R..
That's very true and I agree with you that there is nothing wrong with visiting cemeteries.AquaHump:
However you have to also concede that we'd all get crabby if people showed up in graveyards with shovels, rooted around in our relatives caskets, stole the flowers and chipped chunks off the head stones. Sadly, that is all too often the case on wreck sites.
And, as you suggest, the real risk here is that any perceived offense by one out of line diver can prompt one overly zealous legislator to introduce a bill to ban diving on all wrecks where there were fatalities (whether they went down in the ship or not) that would be passed by a majority of non diving legislators who want to jump on the politically correct band wagon and get votes from the few largely ignorant constituents that actually tear themselves away from their televisions telling them what is important long enough to vote.
When you are a member of any minority, which wreck divers definitely are, you need to tread very lightly and work very hard to create and maintain a positive public image and then police your own ranks to quickly bring those who don't follow the rules into line. If you do anything else, you will eventually find that your chosen activity has been made illegal by an often ignorant and usually over-reactive majority.
Lil' Irish Temper
Guest
Thats all the diving community would need, headlines going across the country about how a diver accidently kicked a body on the Fitzgerald, and it surfaced after 30 years.
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