Sunken tour boat raised to near surface off Hokkaido after 1 month

Godspeed to these salvager’s efforts to raise the Kazu I and to all those at sea putting their own lives at risk to recover those who still remain missing. In time, may all these grieving families find some degree of solace that all best efforts were made for the return of their loved ones.

Divers have reported there is a hole in the boat's hull...

A farce, pure and simple.

They have now dropped it, into deeper water, at 180 meters deep and they don't know if they can even salvage it now. The whole plan sounded and looked unstable and weird from the start.

With JCG Japan Coast Guard footing the bill, is it within the realm of possibility that Nippon Salvage 'dropped' the Kazu 1 in order to prolong the operation...?

They should have carried it gently towards the shore to shallower water ASAP, as they way they had it hanging there off to one side and underwater did not look like a towing potential success story.

Some folks would have you believe the salvage operation was a walk in the park.

No way a walk in the park! Precisely because it was such a delicate operation, they should not have risked ferrying it like that over even deeper water.