The disappearance of Nicola Bulley

How far down the river have they searched?

Could they do some sort of reconstruction to how far a body could travel down this river, guess its hard though to get the exact same conditions, current etc on the day she went missing.

Pretty sure if she had left the park the dog would have followed, the fencing to left of gate where dog was found looks pretty knackered so the dog could have got through if it wanted to. But then the dog could have gone in river after her.
Maybe the dog is the biggest clue and was actually tied up and some foul play is going on with some of the witnesses

Just strange on all fronts
 
adam cool dude said:
He is taking a massive risk saying she is not in the sea then when a large part of his business is finding dead bodies. Why would he do that?
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The way he words it gives him a get out clause if she is indeed found in the river.
"That area is completely negative - there is no sign of Nicola in that area. The main focus will be the police investigation down the river, which leads out to the estuary.

"If Nicola was in that river I would have found her - I guarantee you that - and she's not in that section of the river."
 
MadMossy said:
And you know enough to say otherwise?
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Yes. From my engineering degree in which I studied fluid dynamics and from my 5 years experience as chief engineer for a port operator.
The fact that I have boatmen work for me who have spent 40 years on the river. Literally a minimum of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40 years. Pilots who have 25 years experience on the river and deep sea experience prior to that.
The fact that we operate 5 work and tug boats amongst our fleet which are on the river every day.
That I operate daily and quarterly dredging campaigns with regular sonar surveys to monitor silting patterns and debris deposits.
 
MadMossy said:
Don't quote me on this but I think they said they used a helicopter to search all the way to the coast line, but the sonar was only local ish to where she supposidly entered the water.
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Yesterday the specialist guy said they had covered a total of between 3 and 4 miles of the river with the sonar
 
Dis86 said:
Yes. From my engineering degree in which I studied fluid dynamics and from my 5 years experience as chief engineer for a port operator.
The fact that I have boatmen work for me who have spent 40 years on the river. Literally a minimum of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40 years. Pilots who have 25 years experience on the river and deep sea experience prior to that.
The fact that we operate 5 work and tug boats amongst our fleet which are on the river every day.
That I operate daily and quarterly dredging campaigns with regular sonar surveys to monitor silting patterns and debris deposits.
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Pwn3d
 
adam cool dude said:
The professional boat scanner guy was interviewed on GB news iirc. It is on YouTube. He has done 100's of these so I would kind of believe him.

youtu.be

'Impossible' that Nicola Bulley has been washed away to sea | Forensic expert claims

'Normally when a person drowns they go straight to the bottom. That's in my 20-odd years of experience of dealing with drowning victims.'Forensic expert, Pet...
youtu.be youtu.be
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You forget, this is OCUK GD, it doesnt matter whether the expert is an expert in wildlife, astronomy, astrophysics, medicine, carpentry, aeronautic mechanics, psychiatry, psychology, quantum phsyics, radioactive materials, nuclear fusion , someone on GD always knows better :)
 
Dis86 said:
Yes. From my engineering degree in which I studied fluid dynamics and from my 5 years experience as chief engineer for a port operator.
The fact that I have boatmen work for me who have spent 40 years on the river. Literally a minimum of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40 years. Pilots who have 25 years experience on the river and deep sea experience prior to that.
The fact that we operate 5 work and tug boats amongst our fleet which are on the river every day.
That I operate daily and quarterly dredging campaigns with regular sonar surveys to monitor silting patterns and debris deposits.
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People that don't work on the water cannot understand how unpredictable it can be. An attempted suicide near me was dragged nearly a mile upwind, it was pure luck the thermal camera found him as they were going home.
 
Dis86 said:
Yes. From my engineering degree in which I studied fluid dynamics and from my 5 years experience as chief engineer for a port operator.
The fact that I have boatmen work for me who have spent 40 years on the river. Literally a minimum of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 40 years. Pilots who have 25 years experience on the river and deep sea experience prior to that.
The fact that we operate 5 work and tug boats amongst our fleet which are on the river every day.
That I operate daily and quarterly dredging campaigns with regular sonar surveys to monitor silting patterns and debris deposits.
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Ok fair enough I stand moderately corrected, but how much experience do you have with search and rescue when it comes to finding bodies with dangly bits (arms and legs!) in the river vs the experts in this case?
 
mcast123 said:
People that don't work on the water cannot understand how unpredictable it can be. An attempted suicide near me was dragged nearly a mile upwind, it was pure luck the thermal camera found him as they were going home.
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Well you have to say that trying to commit suicide in a body of water whilst attaching a sail to you is pretty poor planning :D
 
mcast123 said:
People that don't work on the water cannot understand how unpredictable it can be. An attempted suicide near me was dragged nearly a mile upwind, it was pure luck the thermal camera found him as they were going home.
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I didn't appreciate it until I did. We have a jetty that is a remarkable example of how badly even experts can get it wrong.

It leans over at an angle of 15 degrees as they never considered how its installation would affect flow within the river. It increased the flow alongside which caused undercutting of the foundations and...voila.
 
Uther said:
The way he words it gives him a get out clause if she is indeed found in the river.
"That area is completely negative - there is no sign of Nicola in that area. The main focus will be the police investigation down the river, which leads out to the estuary.

"If Nicola was in that river I would have found her - I guarantee you that - and she's not in that section of the river."
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He has set himself up to lose then if they find her in water.
 
Tombstone said:
Yesterday the specialist guy said they had covered a total of between 3 and 4 miles of the river with the sonar
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Entirely plausible if it's wide beam. One thing I keep laughing at is him saying they can see individual stones.
They absolutely can but will they hell be operating at that resolution. We typically operate on 0.25m as its enough to spot anything that may endanger a vessel or for significant defects in riverside structures.
If we're doing a berth survey we'll operate at as much as 1m.
 
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adam cool dude said:
He has set himself up to lose then if they find her in water.
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Or win if they dont. Depends what happens, IF she turns up in the river, all those who have poopooed her being in the river will look like chumps, IF she turns up not in the river, all those who insisted she is in the river will look like chumps.

My personal opinion is that we will never find out what happened to her, one way or the other.
 
Dis86 said:
Entirely plausible if it's wide beam. One thing I keep laughing at is him saying they can see individual stones.
They absolutely can but will they hell be operating at that resolution. We typically operate on 0.25m as its enough to spot anything that may endanger a vessel or for significant defects in riverside structures.
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No idea what the resolution was on the footage I watched of it today ( you might be able to tell from it ), it looked pretty good to me
 
Tombstone said:
Or win if they dont. Depends what happens, IF she turns up in the river, all those who have poopooed her being in the river will look like chumps, IF she turns up not in the river, all those who insisted she is in the river will look like chumps.

My personal opinion is that we will never find out what happened to her, one way or the other.
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As I said way back in the 2nd or 3rd day, I'll be sat on my rocking chair in 30 years time in my conservatory and something will come on the daily news broadcast directly into your head, saying a body has been found in some random location and its a DNA match.

I remember the day the news broke that the body had been found of Melanie Hall who vanished from Bath in 1996. I remember the media attention it gained at the time, no one ever expected her to be found 30 miles from where she vanished.
 
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Tombstone said:
No idea what the resolution was on the footage I watched of it today ( you might be able to tell from it ), it looked pretty good to me
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It will do. Modern sonar is fantastic. It could absolutely locate a body if one is there but they can also hide as shadowing is a thing. We've got a lot of timber structures such as jetties, wavebreaks and dolphins which produce interference when you're scanning around them. Particularly if the workboat goes in close as the prop blast causes cavitation. Smaller boats will avoid that however and they're probably using a RIB given how narrow the river is upstream.

We even have an autonomous drone that we can set away to do areas within harbours. I may or may not have spent far too much time playing with that one evening.
 
mcast123 said:
Exactly, it's puzzling why he would say he's 100% sure, that's more biased than the police saying she's likely in the water.
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Because he's not used to being interviewed or dealing with the media would be my guess and isn't thinking clearly about the language he's using.
 
Dis86 said:
Because he's not used to being interviewed or dealing with the media would be my guess and isn't thinking clearly about the language he's using.
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Or probably that he is 100% sure she isnt in the water.

Which doesnt mean that she isnt 100% in the water, just that he is 100% sure she isnt. After all, a person can be 100% sure of something and still be wrong :)
 
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