Navy plan would tow Ehime Maru to depth of 90 feet

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

In the Navy's ambitious plan to retrieve bodies from the Ehime Maru, the Japanese fishing vessel would be moved from its current depth of 2,000 feet to a level well within the limits of recreational diving.

By moving it to a depth of about 90 feet, U.S. and Japanese divers would be able to work in and around the vessel in a relatively safer environment, said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, the agency overseeing the salvage effort.

Two lifting plates would be attached to the Ehime Maru by remotely operated vehicles guided by technicians on a surface vessel. Cables from the vessel would then be connected to the plates and raise the Ehime Maru off the ocean floor, Dolan said.

To get the plates under the Ehime Maru, sand beneath the stern and the bow would have to be removed, but Dolan said the bow would require less work.

"They will only lift it off the bottom about 15 to 30 feet," Dolan said. "It is kind of like a cradle. The ship on the surface keeps moving it."

The lifting vessel would try to maintain that buffer between the ocean bottom and the Ehime Maru, pausing if it becomes necessary to raise the fishing vessel higher, Dolan said.

Divers should have no trouble working at 90 feet; the recreational limit is 130 feet.

Dolan said the Navy's salvage contractor, Smit-Tak, will probably move the Ehime Maru, which sank after the USS Greeneville tore through its hull during a surfacing drill on Feb. 9. The high school fishery training vessel lies in waters nine miles south of Diamond Head.

Nine of the 35 people aboard the Ehime Maru, including four teenage boys, were lost at sea and their remains could be trapped in the fishing vessel. Relatives of the victims have urged the Navy to recover the bodies.

The cost of the job, which is expected to take six months, is estimated to be $40 million. The Navy does not yet know who will decide if the project will go forward, although U.S. military officials have pledged to retrieve remains if the job was technically feasible.

Dolan said the Navy has not decided where it would take the vessel or what would be done with it once remains are recovered.

The weight of the Ehime Maru, filled with seawater and possibly some diesel fuel, could be as much as 750 tons, Dolan said. Although the Navy has retrieved planes and helicopters from depths as far as 17,000 feet, nothing as heavy as the Ehime Maru has been brought to the surface, she said.

"This is the type of thing our salvage and diving people do," she said. "Our guys have done a lot of this stuff, most of the time at shallower depths."

Before work can begin, however, the Navy must complete an environmental assessment and have it approved by state and federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Mike Ardito, an EPA spokesman in San Francisco, said the agency wants to know how much of the 40,000 to 42,000 gallons of diesel fuel that was in the Ehime Maru when it left Honolulu Harbor remains in the hull.

Don Palawski, the assistant field supervisor for the wildlife service's Pacific Islands Fish & Wildlife Office, said the Navy is working to schedule a meeting to discuss the potential impact the move would have on the environment.

A key part of the review would include the shallow-water work site. "We would probably ask them to do a survey of that location so we would know what was there before," he said. "Hopefully, they will have a location that is just sand."

The Honolulu medical examiner, Dr. Kanthi von Guenthner, said her office will probably assist in the identification of any remains brought to the surface. Autopsies also will be done, she said.

"We will try to somehow use all the ways and means of identification," she said. "We are very well prepared to do what we have to do to make identification for the families."