NOAA goes diving for U-boats in North Carolina

Sheesh!

That's all the dive community needs. NOAA sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong.

So how much of my hard earned tax dollars are they spending on this fiasco? New boat? Fuel cost per day must be in the hundreds of dollars?

Wow! What a waste of taxpayer funds.

My grandfathers brother, Master Mariner Leman Urquhart, was captain of the "City of Atlanta" torpedoed in Jan. 1942 nearby by U-123. The ship had left Manhattan, NY for Savannah, Georgia where he, orginally of Castalia, Grand Manan Island, N.B., Canada but a naturalized US citizen, was also a harbor pilot. The large sidewheeler (according to a photo shown to me in the library of the National Maritime Historical Society in Peekskill, NY) built in West Chester, PA in 1904 only had three survivors of the 47 on board, the captain not one of them. I see that it has been or was marked as a hazard to shipping, the intent of its sinking. A high school school chum, an investigative journalist, Lou Young, interviewed the U-123 captain, Reinhard Hardegen, before he died in the 1990s, one of the few survivors of the "Battle of the Atlantic". Of course these submarine wrecks with torpedoes in them should be seen as very hazardous to the diving public and I am glad there is an assessment of the risks being conducted.(source: chapter 9 "Where is the Navy?" in "Operation Drumbeat" (1990) by Michael Gannon)

I worked in part with the NOAA archaeologists in Cold Spring, NY who also had input into the creation of the design for remediation of the nickel-cadmium contamination in the waters and marsh around Cold Spring, NY. I worked on the actual survey, in a number of magnetometer surveys, on marsh and on the water, and on the reconstruction of bathymetry from modern and historic data for comparisons to try to ascertain changes from the early days until the present to aid the preservation of the landscape if need be incorporated into the remediation designs. However, it was not well stated that over 1 million explosive shells and 20,000 gun carriages had also been made there. Fortunately, the best metal often includes previous forged metal added to it, and only two large caliber empty shells were encountered during the archaeology phase, though I would have liked to have known! It was not in the "Health and Safety Plan"!

"...Reinhard Hardegen, before he died in the 1990s, one of the few survivors of the "Battle of the Atlantic" still seems to be alive according online, b. 1913.