If the search area for the necklace were 1/4 square mile to allow for drift
Your search area is perhaps a bit small.
Where, exactly, was the ship she dropped it from at the exact moment she dropped it? Ships move around quite a bit, even when trying to maintain position over a wreck. And how precisely do you know when she dropped it?
you would only need to search about 435,000 necklace-width positions.
Only, huh? That’s still quite a lot when you’re talking about one of the most difficult places on the planet to get to. And because the necklace would likely sink straight into the soft ocean floor mud immediately upon impact, it’s likely not going to be just sitting there, easily found with a visual search. You will indeed need to use metal detecting.
One issue with metal detecting: the main body of the ship only broke into two large parts, sure, but the entire area is going to be scattered with a debris field of small parts and junk. Pieces that broke off as the ship was breaking up, pieces that drifted away as the ship sank, pieces that broke off when it hit the bottom, pieces that were buoyant enough or interesting enough to sea creatures to drift away over the years of sitting at the bottom… You’re going to be getting a ton of false positives all over the place. A door hinge, a passenger’s pocketwatch, little scraps of broken-off plumbing pipe, a fork, hundreds of little scraps of hull plating…
Searching through all of that will be extremely tedious (and expensive!), with no guarantee of eventual success. For all you know, a fish spotted the shiny, glinting thing as it sank and instinctively swallowed it, and now your multi-million dollar necklace is 50 miles away, giving some fish a stomachache.
All great points. Maybe there’s a metal detecting technology that can sniff specific types of metal? Or, some kind of density scan that could be tuned to the materials in the necklace?
Ostensibly, they would be directly over the Titanic wreck because they were currently diving it, and the time the necklace was dropped as they were standing there when that old crone dropped it in front her middle-class daughter and the crew dedicating their professional lives to finding it. Estimations of the ocean currents and mockups of a necklace falling in seawater might tighten the search area.
The real question is, how long could you comb a sea floor littered with Titanic debris before costs rose to more than the value of the necklace?
By the way: RIP to Bill Paxton: Space Marine, Tornado Chaser, and Shipwreck Archeologist. May you find the Heart of the Ocean in your heavenly dreams. You are missed 😢
When the lady you invited on your ship to find a necklace chucks it overboard:
Your search area is perhaps a bit small.
Where, exactly, was the ship she dropped it from at the exact moment she dropped it? Ships move around quite a bit, even when trying to maintain position over a wreck. And how precisely do you know when she dropped it?
Only, huh? That’s still quite a lot when you’re talking about one of the most difficult places on the planet to get to. And because the necklace would likely sink straight into the soft ocean floor mud immediately upon impact, it’s likely not going to be just sitting there, easily found with a visual search. You will indeed need to use metal detecting.
One issue with metal detecting: the main body of the ship only broke into two large parts, sure, but the entire area is going to be scattered with a debris field of small parts and junk. Pieces that broke off as the ship was breaking up, pieces that drifted away as the ship sank, pieces that broke off when it hit the bottom, pieces that were buoyant enough or interesting enough to sea creatures to drift away over the years of sitting at the bottom… You’re going to be getting a ton of false positives all over the place. A door hinge, a passenger’s pocketwatch, little scraps of broken-off plumbing pipe, a fork, hundreds of little scraps of hull plating…
Searching through all of that will be extremely tedious (and expensive!), with no guarantee of eventual success. For all you know, a fish spotted the shiny, glinting thing as it sank and instinctively swallowed it, and now your multi-million dollar necklace is 50 miles away, giving some fish a stomachache.
All the forks have been reclaimed by the sea.
She probably grabbed the necklace, too, so you’re shit out of luck.
All great points. Maybe there’s a metal detecting technology that can sniff specific types of metal? Or, some kind of density scan that could be tuned to the materials in the necklace?
Ostensibly, they would be directly over the Titanic wreck because they were currently diving it, and the time the necklace was dropped as they were standing there when that old crone dropped it in front her middle-class daughter and the crew dedicating their professional lives to finding it. Estimations of the ocean currents and mockups of a necklace falling in seawater might tighten the search area.
The real question is, how long could you comb a sea floor littered with Titanic debris before costs rose to more than the value of the necklace?
By the way: RIP to Bill Paxton: Space Marine, Tornado Chaser, and Shipwreck Archeologist. May you find the Heart of the Ocean in your heavenly dreams. You are missed 😢
When the lady you invited on your ship to find a necklace chucks it overboard: