Keeping the salt water off the camera prevents immediate damage to the electronics.
Yes, the air has moisture, or I should say there is moisture up there amongst the air, and the moisture contains salt. One company I worked for made parts for Raytheon's military navigation systems. Because the design did not call for air tight casing, the circuit boards kept corroding. We had to go through several intricate plating processes to protect the parts, doubling the cost of box.
The reason for the fresh water rinse is to prevent evaporated salt water from leaving salt crystals. That is why, even if fresh water is unavailable, a salt water rinse tank is still desirable until fresh wate can be used. Once the salt forms a crystal, it becomes very difficult to get it back into solution. We once needed to dispose of 18 drums of salt. I did some quick calculations and being conversative, I had one of my guys throw one drum of salt into a 500 gallon tank of water, mix until disolved and drain. It worked so well, he decided to do two drums at time. It worked so well, he decided to do three drums at a time. Oops. One massive crystalline object that took forever to get rid of.
Yes, the air has moisture, or I should say there is moisture up there amongst the air, and the moisture contains salt. One company I worked for made parts for Raytheon's military navigation systems. Because the design did not call for air tight casing, the circuit boards kept corroding. We had to go through several intricate plating processes to protect the parts, doubling the cost of box.
The reason for the fresh water rinse is to prevent evaporated salt water from leaving salt crystals. That is why, even if fresh water is unavailable, a salt water rinse tank is still desirable until fresh wate can be used. Once the salt forms a crystal, it becomes very difficult to get it back into solution. We once needed to dispose of 18 drums of salt. I did some quick calculations and being conversative, I had one of my guys throw one drum of salt into a 500 gallon tank of water, mix until disolved and drain. It worked so well, he decided to do two drums at time. It worked so well, he decided to do three drums at a time. Oops. One massive crystalline object that took forever to get rid of.
