I don't think Cooper ended up in the river that night. The diatom analysis doesn't support it. I think it is more likely he no-pulled and his body ended up in the brush along the northern riverbank.
well, that would be interesting, if the diatom analysis could be definitely used to predict nopull or pull.
But if the money separated from Cooper on exit, then the money diatom analysis is surely independent of pull or nopull. So there's no real way to definitely connect diatom analysis with pull/nopull.
it's very unlikely the bag stayed attached to cooper?
I think we may be talking about two different things.
The money left the plane attached to Cooper. Certainly, it could become detached from Cooper after that. Whether Cooper was a pull or no-pull is independent of the diatom findings unless you are saying Cooper ended up in the river that night with the money still attached to him. According to the diatom analysis the money did not get wet that night - whether it was attached to Cooper or not.
The diatoms Tom found seem to be endemic to the whole Columbia region; Portland-Vancouver. Im guessing the population is different in the northern Washougal. So, the 'toms found seem to indicate exposure in the Portland-Vancouver water basin.
Diatom exposure requires contact with water. People assume the bills were in some container, and if that's true that may offer a small barrier to water-diatom exposure at least until the bundles are freed from their container ? But, the bills are packaged as bundles wrapped with straps or bands or both. That packaging means that interior bills are never directly exposed to diatom bearing water. And that is exactly what Tom found:
"The inner degraded edge where the SEM samples were taken from showed no accumulations, suggesting
the bills had congealed into a solid lump (consistent with the condition that the bills were found in), preventing any further diatom infiltration ..."
That result is important because it suggests diatom exposure happened only after some months or years after the hijacking. It took time (months/years) for the bills to congeal into a solid lump, as found by the Ingrams. Once congealed into a solid mass diatoms can only infiltrate at the edges of the bundles - with few or no diatoms found in the interior area of bills. Likewise, the areas of the bills that lack diatom evidence suggest these bundles never 'fanned out' in a diatom rich environment to leave diatoms in the interior portions of the bills.
Since diatoms were only found at the edges of the bills, that implies diatom exposure happened only after the bills were congealed masses, or during the time the bills were congealing. That establishes a clock on when diatom exposure happened. Based on that evidence, diatom exposure happened months or years after the hijacking.
There is no direct way to date when the exposure to diatoms happened. Diatoms dont come with a birth certificate! They only come with a seasonal time stamp. In his King-5 interview Tom says the diatoms he found are SPRING diatoms. In his research paper he says they are SUMMER diatoms. The predominate diatom found, asterionella formosa, overlaps Spring and Summer by a month or more, so either classification is correct. But, do not omit the several other seasonal diatoms that were also found! One case of any Fall diatom is important. That shows the bills were exposed to at least one Fall diatom somewhere in its history.
In addition Tom makes a NEW concession finally: he concedes, "Dredging operations took place on the river ... and the sand dumped on Tena Bar ... could have contributed to additional sand being on top of the bills'. That is a large concession on Tom's part, finally after years of saying the dredging and Ingram find had no connection whatever because of the distance between the two sites. Water flows south to north at Tena Bar. Tom is finally acknowledging that fact!
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