These guys were local NJ Wreck divers ... our local newspaper has had
an article each day over this past weekend as to what they believed
had happened, etc.

In a nutshell, they did a deep penetration and did not use guide
lines.  While the wisdom of this can of course be debated, there is
the camp who advocates that old rusty things cut lines too frequently
for them to be considered reliable...let's leave it at that.

The group did apparently use UW marker strobes to apparently mark key
entry/exit-ways, but these ended up being relatively ineffective, as
the reports are that they had a severe silt-out.   With no line and a
lack of visibility to see their strobe markers, it was a blind man's
stumblefest to try to exit the wreck.  Apparently, two did made it
out, although only one of these two made it out with enough air to
make the ascent to survive.

The other potentially interesting element from what I've read so far
was that the group was apparently in a section of the ship that was
supposed to have been permanently shut off from all diving, and
investigators are trying to figure out how it was open to allow them
to gain access.   Don't know if this is a circumstance where the
deceased found themselves on the insides of locked doors or not, nor
any information on the condition of the "lock out" of the portal that
was apparently open.  By what I've read so far, it doesn't appear to
suggest that this group had hacksawed off a chain on their previous
day's penetration dive into the same general area, which would suggest
that someone (or something .. such as the storm that righted the ship)
had opened up access previous to their arrival.  I would also be
inclined to potentially interpret this as to include the possibility
that they did not know the details of the ship's preparation, so it is
possible that they might not have known that they were entering into
an area that there was likely only the one way in & out.   Perhaps
there's some lessons-learned here in terms of pre-sinking ship
preparation elements.

-hh