But families of the victims are infuriated by the fact that only about half the bodies have been recovered. I don't understand. It takes so long to find them. His brother Marcel, a country music star from France, was one of 230 people killed when the jet exploded 10 miles offshore, scattering wreckage across a wide area in water more than 100 feet deep. It's very important for us to find the bodies.
Federal officials say publicly that retrieving the bodies is their first priority.
But experienced marine salvagers say human remains can't be dislodged from the wreckage without irrevocably compromising the crime scene. This is not a matter of simply dragging and mechanically scooping up what they encounter. If any firm is up to this delicate task, it's Oceaneering. In the waters off Long Island, Oceaneering has been painstakingly mapping every square inch of the debris field by towing sonar equipment back and forth in a grid pattern, and using robots to photograph chunks of wreckage. He suggested that the number of people and ships involved in the search may have already contaminated the TWA debris field before it was thoroughly mapped, much the way evidence in the O.J. Simpson case was compromised.