I have worked with insurance companies that went to extraordinary lengths, and expense, to access vessels on the bottom of the sea. Just so they can find evidence they were scuttled. But that was in depths of less than 300 m. At a 1000 m it used to be way too expensive to perform the same operations.

Much more cost effective measures were accomplished by taking a cyber magnifying glass at the humans on the surface. Much cheaper to spy on their communications.

Maybe it didn't sink?

The apparent shift in messaging follows a request from Hong Kong's Marine Department for the restaurant group to provide a written report into the incident as part of an initial investigation.

A spokesman for Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises Limited told CNN on Friday it had always used the term "capsize" to describe the incident and had never claimed the vessel had sunk.

Asked whether this contradicted previous statements, the spokesman said the firm was required "to report the depth of the waters where (the incident) took place," and declined to answer whether this meant the vessel was salvageable or remained afloat.

Many more details in this article, including that it's also in question whether the thing is actually insured.