Breaking news – Today Kieron and Dion diving found the hopper 2-3m away from one of our shot lines. We put shot lines in yesterday when we were scanning the bottom with the sonar and this signature was the best one so the divers dove that one first. The visibility was only about a meter but they searched from the line and found it very quickly.

As you can see from the above diagram the hopper was 25 feet from the photo transit and from the video 2 transit.

After they dove Tommy and I went out on Pipit and picked up all the marker bouys except the one with the hopper on the end. After flushing the jet drives of lots of kelp we took aboard Kieron, Dion and Pat and they all hauled the line as tight as possible.

We then dragged it back (not on the bottom) to the wharf where it was craned out of the water. At 150kg it wasn’t possible to actually lift it up by hand.

Amazingly the Honda engine on it which had been submersed for a week started up fine after a hose down! Unfortunately the rest of the hopper is pretty dented up due to the collision with the water having been dropped from 150 feet. It remains to be seen if it can been used again.