JWarner:
I've since learned more about the dredging and the use of auger (bladed) dredging there, with some first hand reports from locals on dredging in later years and dumping of spoils at Fazio Bros. Sand Company. Apparently it's done yearly there, which leads to the large sand pile you can see in Google Earth. They sell it off every year.
But you're right. Too much stuff is quickly explained by coincidence. You find the money on the beach near or at where dredging spoils were dumped, but you latch onto some weak science and say there's no connection. I'm not sure why Geologists in universities are experts on the results of dredging, when there is no requirement for documenting layers etc when you dredge. There may be a clay layer there. How do we know it's due to the '74 dredging? How do we know the spoils were put on the beach as opposed to deeper on the Fazios land? Implying that dredging creates a single identifiable layer doesn't seem to make sense either.
Or, rather than spoils, the dredger could have just kicked something up/loose, not thru the machine, like you say.
I left it saying "the money got there somehow. it could have drifted multiple times over 9 years. So dredging theories don't necessarily prove anything"
What's really important I think is statements about decomposition and bundle integrity. I've posted some on this at DZ.com. I think we need more science giving us a MINIMUM time requirement for the bundles at Tena Bar. Not a maximum (which I think is bad science...their "1 year" because of the rubber bands is wrong, I think....)
I will grant that the Tena Bar location seems to be at the end of Caterpillar Island such that eddy currents and low velocity water flow should cause garbage to collect there.
Sluggo and I had a discussion about how, if Tena Bar was a good garbage collection point, that the FBI should have unearthed a variety of paper, plastic or aluminum trash in the sand layers during their excavation.
We don't know if they did. They should have, theoretically? if it's a good collection point for money/garbage floating or pushed by the river.
I mean if the money is floating/moving trash, and there's usually other floating/moving trash in a big river, then lots of stuff should collect there.
For comedic interest, although slightly relevant, I'll include a link and quotes from an expert who claims that right feet and left feet from human bodies in the ocean tend to collect on the same but different beaches. I know I'm not an expert on how things float and collect in rivers. This should reinforce that few people are without some study/experiments/data.
A fourth foot has been discovered off Canada's Pacific coast
Published: May 23, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/23/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Mystery-Feet.php
VANCOUVER, British Columbia: For the fourth time in less than a year, a right human foot has been found off one of four different islands in the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia.
...
Ebbesmeyer said it may not be a coincidence they were found in the same area. He said left foot wear and right foot wear often tend to wash up at different times at different places because they float differently.
He added that there are beaches that collect mostly rights and other beaches that collect mostly lefts because the winds of currents sort out left and right foot wear.