Why the Divers failed to notice the RE attached.
As an avid recreational diver (also trained as a rescue diver, but never used it) with 30 years experience exploring caves on the north side of California's Santa Cruz Island (100's of caves, the deepest goes more than 1/4 mile into the island) I can easily see why the divers initially on scene would not notice the presence of the right engine. Entering the water, their primary mission would be a search of likely places survivors might be found. To me that would mean first of all scanning the water surface for potential hypothermia victims, then entering the fuselage, and finally an expanding perimiter around the plane. They would have to be extremely careful to stay close to the surface to maintain spacial orientaion with all of the surrounding boats, which could easily crush them between either the airplane or each other, or worse suck them through a prop.
In low vis, the only thing you have is a compass, and in a swirling current all you would have as a spacial reference to objects on the surface is your last visual check on the surface vs. your current heading, and your experience. Visibility can go as low as inches - which may or may not have been the case here - but once you find a tactile point of reference you tend to proceed from it trailing a string a line you attach to it. In the best case the line is rigged with little fletches that tell you which way you came from just by feel. Many cave diving accidents have occurred because of divers following their lines in the wrong direction.
I believe that the airplane was secured in part by running a cable through a front door and out the overwing window. If that is the case, and once all of the passengers and crew were accounted for, there would be no reason to risk the divers' lives by asking them to perform an inspection of the outboard sections of the aircraft, a task which even if they could accomplish would probably provide little information useful to the investigation.
The rescue divers did a fantastic job, and to fault them for initially failing correctly assess the extent of the damage to the aircraft is just plain wrong.
Last edited by thcrozier; 18th Jan 2009 at 01:52.