Gold Rush for Mammoth Bones in NYC's East River

[Submerged_Stories]

Seems like quite an interesting dive-related story developing in NYC. A recent guest on the Joe Rogan podcast claimed that the American Museum of Natural History dumped an overstock crate with 50k tons of mammoth bones into the East River. Supposedly they are off of 65th Street.

Here is the clip with the big reveal:
With Joe Rogan's millions of followers this has sparked something of a rush for mammoth bones. Already a Youtuber with 13 million subscribers has made a video diving in NYC. Here's a report: Treasure hunters search NYC's East River after claim that mammoth bones were dumped there in the 1940s

The Museum has said this is a hoax but with a combined tens of millions of listeners it seems like the number of divers is only going to grow. The East River is not a an easy dive. Dark, cold, high current, and lots of boat traffic. Plus potential pollution issues to deal with depending on the day (don't get in the water after a big rainstorm!).

What do you make of this? A dangerous hoax? Could it be real? Would you go diving in Manhattan?

 

[Mercracing]

As much as I would love to “find” a mammoth bone, I wouldn’t dive in Manhattan.

 

[SlugLife]

My neighbor excitedly told me "Hey dude, I think I have a great opportunity for us to both make a bunch of money!" So I looked at a 2-minute clip of the video, and here are some of the things I told him:

• I dive in almost zero visibility often, where other divers won't go. The reason I don't mind it is because I'm pulling up lots of sunglasses.
• New York means very, very cold waters.
• If it was on the Joe Rogan show, that means tons of people know about it.
• How much are these bones worth anyway?
• The way to do this properly would be rather expensive. (Drysuits, rebreathers, support boat, sonar, search-patterns, etc)
• Distinguishing bones from other debris, branches, etc would be difficult, especially in bad vis.
• Are these bones corroded or damaged? Several decades underwater tends to cause significant damage to items.
• Actually finding something specific in bad-vis is practically impossible anyway, and it's probalby a very large search area.

...and more.

The last point is, if such a thing were at all easy or practical, I guarantee you that scuba-divers who are in the area, and already dive the area, would be the first to look for it, and if it was at all easy, they would find it well before we could get into the water.

I don't know if it's a hoax or not. Sounds like a giant waste of time, unless you're basically "we were going to dive anyway, might as well do it somewhere there's a low chance of finding some mammoth bones." Even then, I'm not really sure I'd do it. I don't know the exact dive conditions of that river, but at a brief glance, it looks miserable.

 

[Submerged_Stories]

Slug Life, I totally agree with you. It's definitely not easy money and probably near impossible to find even if they did exist.

But a lot of divers are already jumping in for better or worse

 

[SlugLife]

Slug Life, I totally agree with you. It's definitely not easy money and probably near impossible to find even if they did exist.

But a lot of divers are already jumping in for better or worse

If they...

1. Already live in the area
2. Don't mind the conditions
3. Would be diving anyway
4. Aren't spending a bunch of money.
5. (need content for a youtube channel)

Maybe doing the hunt might be worthwhile in the sense that you don't expect to make any money, and therefore aren't loosing any either. If I personally had all of the above conditions, I might make a video about "This is why you're almost certainly wasting your time and money hunting these bones," including showing the conditions, etc.

Based on a quick skim of youtube with the search "bone rush", so far it looks like there are a few clickbait videos. But by the time I could managed to get my butt from Texas to NYC and get in a dozen dives, someone more familiar with the area would have already found them, or the amount of time and effort (and cost) would far exceed whatever those are worth.