El Faro found? Wreckage of cargo ship found 15,000 feet deep

El Faro found? A remotely operated, deep ocean vehicle called CURV-21 will attempt to recover the data recorder — the ship's "black box."

|
(TOTE Maritime via AP)
The cargo ship, El Faro. On Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a search team using sophisticated scanning sonar has found the wreckage of a vessel believed to be the ship which went missing with 33 crew members on Oct. 1 during Hurricane Joaquin.

Sonar indicates that the wreckage believed to be the cargo ship El Faro landed upright on the ocean floor, which may aid efforts to recover the ship's voyage data recorder, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said Sunday.

"The ship will certainly not be recovered; the ship is going to stay there. The containers are too deep to do any kind of recovery mission," said Peter Knudsen, NTSB spokesman. "If human remains are encountered, an attempt would be made to recover them."

Investigators are still awaiting video confirmation that the wreckage found Saturday in 15,000 feet of water east of the Bahamas is the El Faro, which went missing Oct. 1 during Hurricane Joaquin. All 33 crewmembers on board were lost.

"What they detected with sonar was about the size and shape of the El Faro," Knudsen said by telephone with The Associated Press.

CNN Reported:

"The target identified by Orion (side-scan radar) is consistent with a 790-foot cargo ship, which from sonar images appears to be in an upright position and in one piece," the NTSB said.

The NTSB said the USNS Apache crew located the wreckage at 1:36 pm ET during the fifth of 13 planned search line surveys.

The Navy, which has been searching for the El Faro since October 23, plans to send a remotely-operated vehicle named CURV 21 to investigate the wreckage on Sunday. The CURV 21 has video equipment that will help identify the vessel.

Once that is confirmed, a remotely operated, deep ocean vehicle called CURV-21 will use its video camera to document the wreckage and debris field, as well as attempt to locate and recover the data recorder — the ship's "black box." That recorder would have captured the crew's conversations on the bridge as well as information about the ship's equipment, including engine performance and rudder movements.

The recorder would be on deck near the 790-foot ship's wheelhouse area, and its recovery would be more challenging if the ship had landed upside down, Knudsen said.

"We do know the ship, from the sonar-generated images, does appear to be upright, so that's encouraging," he said.

The recovery operations could take up to 15 days, depending on weather and sea conditions.

The CURV-21 is designed to work up to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet of seawater, according to the Navy. The El Faro was reported missing east of the Bahamas, and it apparently came to rest at a depth greater than the final resting place of the Titanic, which lies over 12,500 feet down in the north Atlantic.

"It's very, very challenging at those depths. Imagine operating something under about two-and-a-half miles of water with underwater currents and total darkness. Then you have the weather at the surface to account for," said Jim Staples, a ship captain and maritime consultant based in Norwell, Massachusetts.

Investigators will be looking for any significant signs of damage or visible clues as to whether the crew had time deploy life rafts, he said.

"There may be a telltale sign like her back is broken or that she's split in half and that caused a quick sinking," Staples said.

The El Faro's captain called in before the vessel disappeared, saying the ship had lost its engine power during its voyage from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The captain, Michael Davidson, said the ship was listing, and taking on water.

An extensive Coast Guard search after the El Faro's disappearance found only floating debris and one body in a survival suit, which was not recovered.

The El Faro was scheduled for retirement from Caribbean duty and for new retrofitting for service between the West Coast and Alaska, company officials have said. Both the El Faro and its sister ship were slated to be replaced by two new ships. Aboard when it disappeared were five engineers from Poland, who were working on the retrofitting as the ship sailed to Puerto Rico.

NTSB investigators have said Davidson intended to pass 65 miles from the center of the storm — a risky decision, according to independent maritime experts.

___

Marcelo contributed to this report from Boston.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to El Faro found? Wreckage of cargo ship found 15,000 feet deep
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/1102/El-Faro-found-Wreckage-of-cargo-ship-found-15-000-feet-deep
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe