New Thread.........veeeerrry old problem.....Mercury on our seabed.

[Mike70]

There are a lot of submarines from ww11 on the ocean floor too, didn't they carry tons of mercury as ballast

 

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[MPH200]

From Marx - World's Richest Wrecks

Saw this while reading last night.

 

[Digger]

I have a 5lb bottle of mercury at home I found somewhere years ago.

 

[Darren in NC]

Interesting, Digger. I'd like to see a photo of what a bottle of mercury looks like. Can you post it? Do you have an approximate date?

 

[Digger]

Sorry Darren looks like it is a 1lb bottle. Been awhile but here is what it looks like.

 

[Darren in NC]

No apology needed. Thanks for the pics. Very interesting. I wonder what this particular shipment was used for?

 

[ropesfish]

Mercury is hard to corral and even harder to dispose of.
In an earlier part of my life a few decades ago, I had a reason to use a lot of mercury (it was/is an integral part of some mechanical chart recorders used for recording volume of gas flows). After I sold out of the gas business, I found myself the proud owner of about 13 lbs of the stuff, that is about 330 ml/1.5 cups of mercury. I ignored it for years, but when it came time to sell the farm (literally) I decided that it might be a good idea to get rid of it. While I did make a number of anonymous inquiries, I never did find any agency interested in taking possession and the local scrap yard told me to drop it down a depleted oil or gas well, they did not want to take the chance of a spill by having it on the property. I've heard horror stories about a single compact fluorescent bulb breaking on a carpeted floor in a home and the Hazmat people nearly razing the home to get rid of the mercury from the bulb.
Questions- Is it safer to leave it undisturbed than to try to clean it up? Sort of like those asbestos siding shingles that you can leave on your house, but cannot find a place to discard.
Would UNESCO like to pay for the cleanup of these wrecks?
What is the stuff worth if recovered?
What sort of special hell would the EPA make out of this? The small town in KS that I grew up near was "blessed" with 4 EPA Superfund sites. You cannot imagine the sh/tshow they made of their cleanup efforts.

 

[Bobadilla]

Ropesfish.
UNESCO will never pay for anything in case of cleaning some shipwreck from dangerous material. They care only with nice words and useless contracts and agreements. They do everything possible to stop salvage companies to do the right job and recover the artifacts, but they do not care that this decision opens just the door to the international gangs of looters who really DO NOT care about the underwater environment. At least, I speak for the situation in the Dominican Republic. Any salvage company, of course, cares about their lease territory and they do generally everything possible not to leave any mess there. The TH companies I know they have been working in the Dominican Republic for last 15 years always did everything in favor to protect the ocean environment. The time, when Cousteau dynamited coral reefs in the Silver bank to get hands on some shipwrecks (which has been documented) back in the 80's, are long time gone.

Of course UNESCO "experts" know very well about the mercury cargo at least inside the shipwrecks of "Guadaloupe" and "Tolosa", both cases were widely documented in the past, but they look up to the sky, like nothing would happens....! If they would care at least a little about the underwater life conditions, coral damages and poisoned fish around these shipwrecks, they would ring the bells and spend whatever money to clean this mess. But on the contrary, they spend lot of money to send "experts" to determine if, by chance, Barry Clifford's team did not damage some coral during the excavations of this wreck, but where their money and people are needed, they never go.

Sorry, guys, if you are of different opinion, but this has been my long time personal experience.

Regards to all,
Lobo

 

[Salvor6]

Thank you Lobo for your honest opinion. That's why a lot of people don't trust UNESCO.

 

[enrada]

Spain and UNESCO

What about the Catholic Church? They were thick as thieves with he Spanish in taking gold from indigenous people. Has anyone ever got access to the Vatican vault to see if the gold is still in Inca artifact form or have they melted it down into ingots to hide it's origin?

I am working on a proposal for a shipwreck mercury documentary. I would like about 4 to 6 pictures of loose mercury on the bottom to put in the proposal. Anybody got at least one?

 

[huggis]

Mercury eats gold right up. Not a good mix if they went down together. You would need to separate after salvage not an easy process.

 

[Pubmech]

A friend of mine found an old shipwreck right off the coast of Miami somewhere. He found several ceramic jars with lids still attached, all containing about 2 qts. of Mercury... We both believe that there's a lot more to be found, along with who knows what else! He still has the Mercury in the original jars. Also, this particular wreck is not found in any book or registry. Take care!

 

[PetesPockets55]

Any pictures of the jars?

Also curious about how much would those 2 qt. jars weigh?

 

[xaos]

Given the specific weight, each quart of mercury would weigh about 28 pounds.

(1qt x 1L/1.057qt x 1000ml/1L x 13.6g/1ml x 1lb/453.59g = 28.4 lbs)

I have no idea how much the 2 qt jars themselves would weigh!

 

[Pubmech]

I'm sure my buddy has some pics, but whether or not he'll be willing to post them on the net is another story.. He's kinda paranoid when it comes to his wreck.

 

[sphillips]

Anyone know how the Spanish used the mercury to amalgamate gold and silver?

 

[MPH200]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patio_process

 

[ARC]

Old thread resurrected.

I miss ole SADS.

What was it he use to always say to me... heh oh yeah... "ARC get stuffed".

 

[SADS 669]

Less of the old if you don’t mind.......

 

[ARC]

Sads !