Divers study Ehime Maru's sister ship
| • | Graphic: Raising the Ehime Maru |
| • | Advertiser special: Collision at Sea |
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Navy divers took a dry run through the tight corridors of a sister ship of the Ehime Maru yesterday, learning where to search for nine people lost when the Japanese fishery training vessel was accidentally rammed and sunk by a Navy submarine surfacing off Diamond Head in February.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
"We know where all of the folks were last seen, and so we will have a pretty good idea of where we need to go look," said Rear Adm. William Klemm, who is in charge of the $40 million operation. "We don't know whether we will find all nine missing crew members, but we certainly have an expectation that we will find a number of those."
Journalists gathered around the Kagawa Maru at Pier 9, where divers were checking out the layout of the Ehime Maru's sister ship.
Klemm and his chief diving specialists outlined their ambitious and risky plan after spending hours aboard the Kagawa Maru moored at Pier 9 at Aloha Tower yesterday, learning how its narrow passageways and tight compartments differ from those in Navy ships.
It was the first tangible step in a unique recovery operation that will begin in August. The Navy will attempt to move the Ehime Maru, which lies under 2,000 feet of water. The plan is to raise the ship 100 feet off the sea bed, using a sling cradle suspended beneath a huge heavy-lifting vessel, the Ocean Hercules.
The Ehime Maru will then be transported about eight miles to a spot just off Honolulu International Airport's reef runway.
There, in perhaps the most dangerous stage of the recovery effort, the ship will be raised one-third of a mile up the side of a perilous sea cliff to a safe working depth of just 115 feet.
Ship could break
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
At any point in the operation, the badly damaged Ehime Maru could break in half along a huge gash ripped in its side by the rudder of the USS Greeneville on Feb. 9, or around a gaping hole that may have been ripped into its bottom when it plunged to the seabed.
Members of a U.S. Navy diving team left the Kagawa Maru after they spent hours touring and studying the interior of the ship.
Even if the ship can be brought to a safe and shallow depth off the airport, divers entering could find a mass of twisted wreckage, jammed hatches and scattered gear that would prevent access, Klemm said.
"This is a very difficult challenge," he told reporters from Hawai'i and Japan gathered on Honolulu's waterfront. "First of all, we are going to do something that has not been done before, in bringing this ship from such a deep resting point into shallow water."
The Navy has retrieved aircraft from depths as great as 17,000 feet, but never before has it tried to lift anything as large as the 750-ton Ehime Maru from such a depth. Once in shallow water, the operation again will be unprecedented.
"We are going to have a fairly extensive dive team here, nearly 60 members in all, that is going to work for a period of up to 60 days over the site off the reef runway," Klemm said, "and it is a very difficult task. The technology that we are going to use here has been employed elsewhere, (but) not necessarily for this purpose.
"We are using oil field equipment, for example, that has been in use for some extended periods of time for exploration for oil (but) they have never been applied to ship salvage operations before, so there are some risks involved that the equipment applications that we are going to use will not be successful.
"However, the Navy is a can-do service, and our plan is to execute. We are going to do this."
The raising of the Ehime Maru finds the U.S. Navy using the best of its technology and personnel to recover from a disaster that had international repercussions. It threatened to further strain U.S. relations with Japan, where a huge U.S. military presence was already a sore point with many citizens and politicians.
Navy Cmdr. Roxie Merritt said yesterday that the expedition off Diamond Head this summer is aimed at helping families and neighbors in Ehime Prefecture reach closure and at maintaining good relations with Japan.
Environmental hazard
The expedition also will attempt to eliminate environmental hazards by recovering as much as 45,000 gallons of diesel fuel that may still be aboard.
The Navy expects technological and training benefits as well.
"It is a very valuable lesson for the Navy, to see if it can be done," Merritt said. "In some ways, it's like going to space. How much technology did we get from that?"
One of the technical marvels that may be used is a miniature camera-equipped remote operating submarine vehicle that will be sent into compartments to search for bodies if divers cannot get in, Klemm said.
It is the same kind of submarine camera used most recently to enter the USS Arizona to study what has happened to that battleship since it was sunk by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago.
