
Bomb squad warning over magnet fishing - gadders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45548980
======
moftz
Some more info on the Canal & River Trust:

 _These waterways are accessible upon payment of a licence fee, ranging from a
few pounds to over £1200, for use by boats, canoeists, paddleboarders and
other craft. Walkers and cyclists can use the extensive network of 'Public
Rights of Way' that run alongside the canals and rivers without payment of a
fee, which were previously permissive towpaths._

Do you need a license to just float down the river on an inflatable? Also, if
I drop something into the water, is it now property of the trust? What a
ridiculous governing body. The UK really loves licensing the shit out of
everything.

"Oi, you got a license for that license, mate?"

~~~
owenversteeg
Jesus. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, needing a paid license to
float down a canal on an inflatable is ridiculous.

The comments responding to you don't make any sense either. Needing some sort
of permit to permanently moor a houseboat is totally different from having to
pay to use a canoe or inflatable in the water.

In case there anyone wants to defend the UK's absolutely idiotic licenses,
here's a concrete example from your neighbors about 100 miles east.

Here in the Netherlands we have a ridiculous amount of public water - canals,
rivers, lakes, etc - and it's all entirely free to use. It's even free to moor
your boat temporarily (up to 3 days) at thousands of spots around the country.
Our population density is double, we have more people with boats, and we have
a massive amount of commercial shipping traffic everywhere. We've got several
of the busiest ports in Europe. One of them is as big as ten of the port of
London! And somehow it works out splendidly.

~~~
dogma1138
A yearly license for an unpowered boat is £48, daily, weekly and monthly
visitor licenses are also available and cost near to nothing.

This only covers privately owned “boats” if you rent a kayak or a canoe or a
boat the operator must have a business waterways license which will enable you
to use the waterways for the duration of your rental.

~~~
owenversteeg
Here in the Netherlands, I enjoy using a little inflatable boat I bought for
€13 on the various waterways around the country. It's a simple, free,
enjoyable thing to do.

Paying 48 pounds (63 USD) per year for the ability to use my cheap inflatable
on the inland waterways is preposterous. That's more than four thousand US
dollars added up over a lifetime.

The cheapest/shortest license I could find was a princely £9.10. Fairly
frequently I've gone out for a brief little trip - an hour or so with the
boat, drift down a canal, get some lunch - with my girlfriend. Now in order to
do that I need to fill out a multi-page form and pay someone £9.10?
Ridiculous.

Why can't it work the way it works here? We have more waterways, more people
on the water, more commercial shipping, and a substantially more involved
system of canals, lakes and rivers, and it's totally free to plop your little
inflatable wherever you please (excluding a very small number of areas only
available to commercial traffic, far from where anyone would want to be in an
inflatable.)

By the way, I've been to the UK, and your waterways are disgusting - certainly
worse maintained than here in the Netherlands. I've seen heroin needles, human
feces, and piles of trash. Meanwhile over here we keep our waterways clean
without making people pay four thousand bucks over their lifetime for
something as simple as an inflatable boat. This is despite the planeloads of
British tourists coming to the Netherlands to throw trash in our waterways.

------
hfdgiutdryg
_While the BBC filmed him and his two uncles, it took just 10 minutes before
they found a knife in the canal._

That's some very British pearl-clutching.

~~~
aftbit
As an American sitting on BART with a 3 inch knife in my pocket, this part
made me chuckle.

~~~
jdavis703
Hopefully you don't travel through Oakland... A knife 3 inches or longer is
classified as "a dangerous weapon." It's quite ridiculous considering people
with the right permits can bring guns on BART, but it is the law and probably
not good to go around bragging about breaking it.

~~~
paulie_a
It really doesn't matter. I carry a multi tool that would be illegal in my
backpack and a set of lockpicks which are probably illegal too.

------
sixdimensional
There is a YouTube channel of a guy in Germany who does this as well who just
announced that he got shut down from magnet fishing by the German authorities
also. They said he could face _criminal_ charges if he kept doing it. I wonder
if it's for the same reason. The guy was heartbroken as he really enjoyed
doing it.

------
LiamPa
Seen people do this on the Thames although they are asking for trouble. We
even have 1400 tonnes of explosives just waiting to explode at the entrance:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery?wprov=sf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery?wprov=sfti1)

> According to a BBC news report in 1970,[12] it was determined that if the
> wreck of Richard Montgomery exploded, it would throw a 1,000-foot-wide (300
> m) column of water and debris nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 m) into the air and
> generate a wave 16 feet (5 m) high. Almost every window in Sheerness (pop.
> circa 20,000) would be broken and buildings would be damaged by the blast.
> However, news reports in May 2012 (including one by BBC Kent) stated that
> the wave could be about 4 feet (1 m) high, which although lower than
> previous estimates would be enough to cause flooding in some coastal
> settlements.

~~~
Bjartr
The Montgomery is ~2km from the shore and has a buoy marked exclusion zone
that is monitored visually and by radar. I wouldn't worry about magnet fishers
affecting it.

------
dmix
> Two men drowned while magnet fishing in Huddersfield, after being pulled
> into the water.

I'm curious how this happened. The linked article provided no details...

~~~
aaron695
Sadly it seems just a simple drowning and the death from someone incorrectly
trying to save them -

[https://www.examiner.co.uk/news/theyve-tried-save-each-
other...](https://www.examiner.co.uk/news/theyve-tried-save-each-
other-14834760)

Given this quote “And my last words to them were: ‘Stay safe, be careful.
Don’t go in the water.’

I'd guess possibly not great swimmers. This is not a normal thing to say in
cultures where swimming is strong.

The "magnet fishing" link is just sensationalist bullshit.

~~~
dmix
True it's possible the son was trying to grab something off the magnet line.
It's not easy to pull larger items up manually onto the shore/vessel, based on
the magnet fishing videos I've seen. He was probably wearing full clothes.

Then the father jumped in? And they both drowned.

BTW, I had to vouch for your dead comment. Not sure why it was flagged.

------
dmix
I watched one video on youtube and they found a safe with a woman's passport
and various harddrives, a handgun, and a sheathed knife with a swastika
insignia and that's only 15min in:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYuwfU3fPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYuwfU3fPs)

------
larkeith
> He defended what they were doing - including the cost to the taxpayer when
> bombs or other artillery are found and the authorities have to be called.

Seriously? The article's going to try to cast a negative light on ordnance
being voluntarily removed from waterways? Isn't this sort of thing one of the
main points of the bomb squad in WW2-impacted countries?

~~~
specialp
Their point is not to actively trigger an emergency at a given time. If a bomb
is undisturbed at the bottom of a water body it is not bothering anyone and
actually is providing artificial reefs for marine life. Should it be found one
day and removed? Yes probably. But should it be brought to the surface by
amateurs and need immediate reaction? No.

~~~
saudioger
>Should it be found one day and removed? Yes probably

Let's not pretend that any government is going to take it upon themselves to
sweep their country's waterways for unexploded ordinance. Come on.

The hope is that it lays undisturbed long enough to be rendered inert.

~~~
jfk13
> unexploded ordinance

It's "ordnance", not "ordinance".

~~~
saudioger
organ stance?

------
Animats
Europe and the UK have an insane amount of ordnance left over from the two
world wars. France still recovers about 900 tons a year. Some areas hit by
chemical attacks still won't grow anything, a century after WWI.

------
alexchamberlain
Aside: what is the legal precedent for by-laws, such as the £25 fine for
taking something you find? Is it a contract you enter into on the basis the
trust owns the land either side of the canal?

~~~
pm215
By-laws in the UK are delegated legislation (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byelaws_in_the_United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byelaws_in_the_United_Kingdom)).
Parliament makes a law which grants some other body the power to make byelaws
(which then come into force subject to approval by a relevant government
minister). In this case the British Waterways Board used powers granted it
under the British Transport Commission Act, 1954 to make canal bye-laws:
[http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/media/documents/foi/legal/...](http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/media/documents/foi/legal/BW_General_Canal_Bye-
laws.pdf)

The BWB has subsequently been abolished with its powers (including the power
to make and enforce byelaws) transferred to the Canal and Waterways Trust.

Railway bye-laws operate similarly.

------
cwkoss
I wonder if they could measure trace explosive compounds/manufacturing
residues at various points in the riverbed and use a hill climbing algorithm
and repeated tests to locate the remaining bombs.

------
js2
Perhaps they could take a trip to the US and do some magnet fishing around
Tybee Island.

~~~
Something1234
Why Tybee Island?

~~~
evan_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-
air_coll...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-
air_collision#Midair_collision)

> The crew requested permission to jettison the bomb, in order to reduce
> weight and prevent the bomb from exploding during an emergency landing.
> Permission was granted, and the bomb was jettisoned at 7,200 feet (2,200 m)
> while the bomber was traveling at about 200 knots (370 km/h). The crew did
> not see an explosion when the bomb struck the sea.

> Some sources describe the bomb as a functional nuclear weapon, but others
> describe it as disabled. If the bomb had a plutonium nuclear core installed,
> it was a fully functional weapon. If the bomb had a dummy core installed, it
> was incapable of producing a nuclear explosion but could still produce a
> conventional explosion. The 12-foot (4 m) long Mark 15 bomb weighs 7,600
> pounds (3,400 kg) and bears the serial number 47782. It contains 400 pounds
> (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium. The
> Air Force maintains that the bomb's nuclear capsule, used to initiate the
> nuclear reaction, was removed before its flight aboard B-47.

~~~
ams6110
In that case maybe you want to fish with a Geiger counter and not a magnet.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The point of the magnet is that even if you don't find the nuke you find the
hordes of AR-15s people have lost in "tragic boating accidents" over the
years. If you go out fishing for bluefin it's better to come back with a
cooler full of stripers than an empty cooler, metaphorically speaking.

