Oil leaks concern A convoy including research and salvage vessels and other ships equipped with oil skimmers will escort the Rockwater 2 as it is expected to begin the time-consuming journey of moving the Ehime Maru.
Ehime Maru
lift team
A Navy salvage team will
follow to clean up anything
that falls from the
sunken shipBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comThe Navy hopes to begin the round-the-clock moving operation as soon as the Rockwater 2, the civilian salvage ship contracted to raise the Ehime Maru, is able to lift the 830-ton vessel 90 feet above the ocean bottom.
Rear Adm. William Klemm, who is in charge of the unprecedented recovery operation, earlier this week said the convoy will be led by the USNS Sumner, an oceanographic research vessel.
"They will be keeping a bottom profile, depth and current information, which they will feed to the Rockwater," he said.
The USS Salvor, a Navy salvage and rescue ship, will follow with its remotely controlled vehicles, or ROVs, searching the ocean bottom for anything that might fall off the Ehime Maru. Other vessels will be equipped with oil skimmers. As much as 10,000 gallons of lube and diesel fuel is believed to be still trapped within the hull of the Japanese fisheries training vessel.
The Ehime Maru now rests on the ocean floor 2,000 feet underwater, nine miles south of Diamond Head, where it sunk after being struck by the submarine USS Greeneville on Feb. 9. The Navy is attempting to move the fisheries training vessel to shallower waters near Honolulu Airport, where Japanese civilian and Navy divers will search for the remains of nine people whose bodies were never found.
Klemm said the 24-hour operations will cease when the convoy reaches a reef shelf about a mile before the shallow-water dive site. At that point, Klemm said, the move to the shallow-water site will depend upon the winds, currents, sea state and tides. The Ehime Maru will have to be raised more than 1,500 feet up a steep reef wall.
That operation will only be done during the day so the Navy can monitor it for any oil spills. Asked what he believed is the greatest risk facing the Ehime Maru, the two-star admiral said that if weather is taken out as a factor, it would be equipment. Attempts to lift the Ehime Maru last month were cut short several times when heavy-duty metal lifting straps broke.
"We think the Ehime Maru is sound," Klemm said. "We won't be 100 percent certain of that until we have the opportunity to survey its bottom with ROVs."
Three ROVs will monitor the entire 16-mile transit. One will do an under-body structural examination; another will maintain a watch on the lifting equipment above the ship; and the third will do a quick survey of the ship and then precede the ship as it moves to the shallow-water site.
Transporting the Ehime Maru to the shallow-water site is expected to take three to four days.
Before the operation began in August, the Navy figured an 80 percent chance of success. This week, Klemm raised the Navy's expectations to 90 percent.