Could “in water” be deleted in this scentence?

It’s fine with or without. My preference is to not include it as you have already mentioned the sea and that the objects float so the fact that they are in water is strongly implied.

I wouldn’t put in water, but it’s not terrible to leave it in.

Leave it out.

I would take the “in water” out. I would also take the “c” out of scentence. ;-)

It not only “can” be left out, but it “should be” left out.

What other medium would we be considering it to float or sink in? Air? Alcohol? Of course we’re only interested whether a seagoing ship sinks in water or floats on it. (And “liquid” water, too. We already understand that it will never float on water vapor, and it will probably never sink if it’s placed on enough ice.) Don’t confuse readers with too much detail that won’t aid their understanding.

If there are different buoyancy characteristics of a vessel in fresh water vs. seawater, or if temperature, acidity or other characteristics of the “water” medium matter, then those should be mentioned – if it’s vital to the context of the work. For example, a scientific study of marine engineering / naval architecture should include very fine and exacting detail about the water, but a story about “Thomas the Tugboat” ... not so much.

But as long as we’re talking about actual seagoing ships, the medium that everyone on Earth is already familiar with is whether the ship floats or sinks “in water”. That much can be left out.

Thinking about it, you can take out ‘in the sea’ as well, as the fact that they are ‘floaters’ means that they are floating on water.

You should eliminate “in water”, and you should find another way to express “floater”, because it is not a word commonly used to describe such large objects. The sentence reads as if it were written by a non-native English speaker.

Perhaps, “When a large floating object such as a ship or offshore structure is damaged, it is necessary to determine whether it will sink into the sea.”

Still a bit awkward, but the best I can do with the limited information provided.

@dappled_leaves I agree that ‘floaters’ is an awkward word (I can’t even write it here without quotation marks) but I did Google it, and it is acceptable in this marine science context. Leave the floaters alone!

You can leave it out with no problem, “in the sea” can be left out too.

“When a floater such as a ship or an offshore structure is damaged, it is necessary to determine whether the floater will sink or not.”

Sound fine, if you ask me.

@Stinley I’d be interested to see your sources.

@dappled_leaves I literally googled marine floaters and got lots of serious looking results

@Stinley Well, sure. When you google “marine floaters” you do get a lot of serious looking results. However, (a) those results are all about marine insurance; a floating insurance policy is a real thing that is not actually related to objects in water. And (b), that is literally the worst way to determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct. A thousand people saying a thing in a way that can be googled does not make the thing correct. The world is a very big place, and it is mostly filled with people who don’t speak or write English, or at least don’t speak or write it well.

@dappled_leaves I agree that googling is not a great way to determine correct grammar, but if you don’t know the meaning of a word in a particular context, it is perfectly reasonable to google the word alongside other context words in order to establish its meaning.

I used marine (and I also got relevant results with offshore) because I often look up medical stuff in my job as a librarian so google assumes that I am interested in eye floaters which are significant in migraines. So many meanings of floater.