Navy lifts Ehime Maru off ocean floor
| • | Interactive graphic on how the Ehime Maru will be moved to shallower waters |
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By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
With a powerful tug that caused sediment to billow out from a gash in its hull, the Ehime Maru was lifted from the sea floor yesterday for a slow, 16-mile trip this weekend to a shallow-water recovery site.
Navy officials yesterday detailed the start of the deep-water transit that began with the coupling of a lifting assembly to lower rigging suspended over the 830-ton Japanese fisheries training vessel nine miles south of Diamond Head.
By 11:30 p.m. Thursday, the civilian recovery vessel Rockwater 2's powerful winches were taking the slack out of four 4.5-inch cables. At 1:30 a.m. yesterday, the Ehime Maru broke the suction created with the ocean bottom along the 190-foot ship's hull.
Although flowing silt made it difficult to decipher the images sent by video cameras on two remotely operated vehicles observing the Ehime Maru, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gregg Baumann said it was evident the sail of the submarine USS Greeneville entered the Japanese ship on the starboard side and exited on the port side.
"Between those areas there's still a lot of sediment, and as we continue to move along the sediment wants to fall out from the bottom, so we're still not yet able to capture a very clear depiction of what it looks like," Baumann said.
The Greeneville, a fast-attack submarine, rammed and sank the Ehime Maru during a surfacing drill on Feb. 9. Five crew members and four high school students on board the Ehime Maru were killed.
Navy officials said movement by the Rockwater 2, the lifting assembly and the remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, made coupling the upper and lower lifting assemblies more difficult than anticipated.
After the assemblies were connected, the initial lift went as planned. The Ehime Maru was raised to a little more than 6 feet off the ocean floor, then allowed to settle into two sets of lifting straps.
At about 4 a.m., the Ehime Maru was lifted to about 30 to 45 feet, and started the trip to a shallow-water recovery site off Honolulu International Airport's reef runway at an initial speed of 0.2 knots or about a quarter of a mile per hour.
With the weather "extremely cooperative," the speed was increased to 0.8 knots or a bit less than 1 mile per hour, and by 3 p.m. yesterday, the Rockwater 2 had traveled 2.9 nautical miles or about 3 1/3 miles.
The Navy earlier this week predicted a 90 percent chance of recovering the Ehime Maru, but the effort was hindered by seas of 8 to 10 feet and 35-mph winds.
Crews aboard the Rockwater 2 kept a close eye on whether there was any bending in the hull of the Ehime Maru, but no significant change was detected, the Navy said.
Baumann said the recovery was going "extremely well."
"Everyone is very highly motivated and very confident that we'll be able to carry out the operation as planned," he said.
As much as 10,000 gallons of fuel are still thought to be on board the Ehime Maru, but Baumann said only a "small burp" of 3 to 10 gallons of diesel oil escaped, and it was quickly cleaned up. Two Navy oil skimming platforms are in place should there be a further release.
The USNS Sumner, a research ship, is leading a procession that includes the Rockwater 2, USS Salvor, and Japanese ship JDS Chihaya.
The Navy said the Ehime Maru could reach the 115-foot shallow-water drop-off site sometime this weekend. That is where the recovery of five to seven bodies will be attempted.
The ship will be allowed to stabilize for two to three days before the start of what is expected to be a month of dives.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
