 Sub, ship less than 3 miles apart during periscope check
A Tribute to the Missing
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By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
The search for survivors of the Ehime Maru ended last night, three weeks after a U.S. submarine accidentally sank the Japanese fishing vessel during a surfacing drill off O‘ahu.
Nine people remain lost at sea and could be trapped in the hull of the Ehime Maru, which sits on the ocean floor 2,003 feet below the waves. Political pressure from Japan kept the search going weeks beyond the date the Coast Guard normally would call off any effort to find survivors of a shipwreck.
The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Assateague was scheduled to move on to other missions late last night, said Petty Officer Eric Hedaa, a Coast Guard spokesman. Helicopter searches, which had gone on daily since the accident Feb. 9, ended yesterday afternoon.
The Navy, which finished mapping the ocean floor and retrieving personal effects from the vessel this week, will now shift its attention to the feasibility of raising the 174-foot boat.
The USS Salvor, which served as a floating base for one of its remotely operated deep-diving submersibles, returned to Pearl Harbor yesterday. A second submersible was brought back to port Thursday aboard the the civilian ship C-Commando.
"The focus will now be on salvage," said Jon Yoshishige, Navy spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet. "The salvage experts from the U.S. and Japan will be examining all the data that was collected. They will look at drawings from the ship and will make a recommendation on a course of action."
Yoshishige said all Navy and Coast Guard vessels and aircraft have standing orders to be on the lookout during regular missions for anything connected with the fishing vessel.
Adm. William J. Fallon, a special U.S. envoy sent to Japan by President Bush to apologize for the incident, earlier this week told relatives of those lost after the collision that a list of salvage options will be complete by March 12. He told them the Navy intends to "recover any crew members found."
Fallon arrived in Honolulu Thursday and issued a statement yesterday morning.
"The families of the victims have graciously accepted our apology," Fallon said. "One theme which I heard frequently while in Japan was an appreciation for the understanding and warm hospitality of the people of Hawai‘i."
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