Man overboard from the mount!

[Mee-n-Mac]

Well did they say they were using a borrowed sidescan sonar ? Hmmm, I wonder where they got that idea. More seriously I hope they get lucky and can recover the victim before too long. This has rekindled my thinking re: if there might be a better way to go about a search/recovery like this. SSS and aerial viewing are good tools but there's just too many ways for someone to go undetected. The wait & see approach is awfully hard on the family. I don't know any better way to go about it but still I wonder if the 2 incidents this year might be the impetus for some creative thinking.

[LIforrelaxin]

Originally Posted by Mee-n-Mac

I don't know any better way to go about it but still I wonder if the 2 incidents this year might be the impetus for some creative thinking.

I wonder if an idea would be a scientific study of the currents in the lake. I would imaging this has been done to some degree but probably not as a fully funded grant. I would think this would be something that one of the colleges could under take. Of course finding the funding for such a project might not be so easy, and of course the amount of time to conduct such a project may not neccessarily do any good for anyone anytime soon. But it seems to me the big problem is being able to define a search area once visiable contact is lost.

[SIKSUKR]

WMUR has an article which says they used a special sonar unit and were unsuccessfull.

[Coolbreeze]

In the fire service here in Pa we use Thermal imaging cameras during our initial searches. Once a body cools it is(the camera) virtually useless. Most Coast Guard helos have a similar camera called a Flir (pronounced fleer) camera. It is another tool to help in ititial searches. Both cameras show hot objects in their environments However quite expensive. Our original camera was about 15000 dollars. They since have come down in price a bit. We can't over state how important these tools are to us in the fire service. My prayers to the family of the lost person.

[Diver1111]

As with the search for Fred Surrette, F&G and other authorities have their work cut out for them. That’s the hand they’ve been dealt. It’s not as though they have any choice in the matter. The logistics of this work can be tough to say the least, depending on what you’re looking for, where, and when. The size of the area in this case is very very big. I can’t imagine any other equipment doing a better job than what they’ve been using working with the CT State Police (unless of course you’re JFK, Jr. and your uncle can call in the Navy with their gear, navy divers, and military vessels like the USS Grapple and an unlimited budget looking for pieces of a plane and send taxpayers the tab-which he did).

Bodies are as hard as it gets to find with SSS if for no other reason, size. Finding pipelines, underwater phone cables, ships, planes, large anchors and of course vessels among other pretty identifiable targets is easy compared to this task. To put this into perspective, I was watching TV some about 6 months ago when a professional search team running hardcore SSS had a bear of a time locating a 900 foot vessel in deep water. They had the approximate area, scanned both left & right simultaneously to perhaps ½ mile each way, and the captain was quoted as saying something to the effect of...”you’d think we could hit this thing easily enough-it’s 900 feet long-but no.” They found it only after going back over a tiny area they missed when they were “mowing the lawn”.

I’ve looked at the depths around Welch and they vary a lot, posing the same problems that the waters of East Rattlesnake posed. This is just the nature of the entire lakes region if not all of New England. And I have no idea what the bottom is like in the search area. Keep in mind the towfish has to stay at whatever depth the operator deems appropriate off the bottom. The altitude used off Rattlesnake was 20-30 feet in what was usually 130 feet of water. Slamming it into rocks or other objects is always a risk. Our tow line had a 2 ton tensile strength for this reason even though the fish only weighed about 60 lbs..

E. Rattlesnake was a nightmare of rock, mud, silt, cracks, crevices, house-size boulders, and trees-some sticking out horizontally from the shore-great way to tangle a towfish. There was little uniformity, making the unexpected, routine. As with Fred Surrette, if the object is well into a crack or crevice, it will likely never appear on SSS, ever. Divers may be the only solution-but where do you dive?

I’ve experimented with my own SSS unit, capturing the images below of dive buddies last August in the CT River down in Gill, MA under the French King Bridge. The bottom was clean washed rock and gravel-no weeds, grass, mud-nothing-which actually isn’t all that good for a background. Take a good look at the images and find the diver. It’s the horizontal shadow in both images. Now OF COURSE ¼” wetsuits will absorb a sonar wave big-time, but nonetheless my dive buddy was only in about 15 feet of water and well within the 50 foot scan range at 455kHz I was set to-close by. And yet she was nearly invisible. Bodies can pose similar problems of their own. I’m told the Brits have subs covered in rubber for just this reason.

I wish the searchers the best and thought my input my clarify some of the challenges they face.

[DRH]

The NH Fish and Game Dept. issued the following news release this afternoon:

==================================================
News from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department
November 2, 2006
Phone: (603) 271-3211
Email: info@wildlife.state.nh.us
For information and online licenses, visit http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us

* * * * * * *
CONTACT:
Lt. James Goss: (603) 271-3361
Capt. Martin Garabedian: (603) 271-3128
Jane Vachon: (603) 271-3211
November 2, 2006

WINNIPESAUKEE SEARCH SUSPENDED

CONCORD, N.H. -- Search operations were suspended today in the effort to recover the body of James Sylvestre, age 45, of Hooksett, N.H., who is presumed drowned after falling overboard from the M/S Mount Washington excursion ship on October 28, 2006, on Lake Winnipesaukee.

The recovery effort was brought to a close after an extensive search of approximately one mile along the route of the M/S Mount Washington, conducted by New Hampshire Fish and Game Department divers and Connecticut State Police troopers operating an underwater side-scan sonar unit, turned up no sign of the missing man. The search was concentrated between Welch and Rattlesnake islands, an area with water depths of 50 to 100 feet.

"We had to suspend the search because of the large size of the potential search area and the fact that nothing of significance had been found after several days," said Lt. James Goss of New Hampshire Fish and Game Law Enforcement, who coordinated the recovery effort. "We know how difficult these situations are for the families, and regret we could not bring the search to a successful conclusion."

New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officers and the New Hampshire Marine Patrol were joined in the search and recovery effort by the Connecticut State Police, who volunteered their services, as well as personnel from several local New Hampshire fire departments, including those of Laconia, Gilford, Center Harbor and Alton. The New Hampshire State Police also assisted, using the State Police helicopter to search the lake and shoreline.

B Mae's Resort Inn & Suites in Gilford donated lodging for the Connecticut State Police assisting in the effort.

The N.H. Marine Patrol is investigating the incident.

No further information is available at this time.

-###-

--
Copyright 2006 New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, 11 Hazen Drive, Concord, NH 03301.

[Orion]

Thanks Diver1111 for the enlightening demonstration.

[Lin]

Originally Posted by Orion

Thanks Diver1111 for the enlightening demonstration.

I agree and if you didn't point out the shadows as being the diver I wouldn't have known. Great explanation and visual presentation on the scanners.

[Mr. V]

I wonder what the chances are that the victim's body will rise to the surface of its own accord, say after a few weeks?

Might the cold water prevent that from happening?

Certainly once the ice arrives there will be no chance of recovery until next year.

Sad, all the way around: recovery / Christian burial is obviously the preferred conclusion.

[Blue Thunder]

Without getting too graphic here and assuming Mr. Sylvestre is not entangled in any underwater debris, the cold water will eventually have an "effect" on the body and it will surface on it's own exactly the same as Mr. Surrette earlier this year. There is no real time frame except that, in my experience, it will be at least 2 weeks from submersion. I add my thoughts and prayers to the family as others have previously.

BT

[Mee-n-Mac]

Originally Posted by Blue Thunder

Without getting too graphic here and assuming Mr. Sylvestre is not entangled in any underwater debris, the cold water will eventually have an "effect" on the body and it will surface on it's own exactly the same as Mr. Surrette earlier this year. There is no real time frame except that, in my experience, it will be at least 2 weeks from submersion. I add my thoughts and prayers to the family as others have previously.

BT

And that is why it's so hard on the families, they just don't know when, and even for sure if, their lost one will be recovered. Knowing the currents, if they are large enough to matter, might help but as Diver1111 shows it's just incredibly hard to "see" what's down there amongst Winni's uneven bottom and shorelines. Previously someone had a smart suggestion of using a fishing net and this might help in certain areas but I'll guess that most of the bottom is so full of snags that it's not practical. A higher resolution SSS might be possible but probably only with the Navy's budget. Prior mention of cadaver sniffing dogs to locate victims, even when underwater, makes me wonder if some "artificial nose" couldn't be manufactured and incorported onto a towfish or ROV ? A swarm of divers searching the bottom would probably work but wouldn't be practical so that makes me wonder about a swarm of ROV's (working ceaselessly) couldn't somehow be utilized (probably just as impractical as the diving team) ? It's a good thing this type of loss and recovery isn't very common here but at the same time that, and the obstacles mentioned previously, contrive to hinder any forward progress on how the whole recovery process might be made to work better. If it were easy to do so, it would have been done already. Still I keep it on a back burner in my brain so that perhaps some confluence of info might give me some magic insight as to what could be done.

[jrc]

I don't know where I read it, maybe here. The general rule seems to be, that after a person drowns and sinks. Some time later, usually a week to a month depending on environmental issues, the body floats to the surface. After a some number of days on surface the body will sink again. At that point it's gone forever, unless someone go down and finds it. This time of year the lake is deserted. There's a good chance that no one will see it and it might be lost forever.

I don't know the technology involved with an artificial nose, but if the chemical compounds of a body are distinct enough, I'm sure technology could be designed. There are bound to be a lot of false alarms, humans are not the most numerous organisms to drown in the lake.

Is it just me, or is three drownings a lot for one year?

[Pineedles]

I'm sorry, but all this leaves me a bit heartsick.