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Raising the
Ehime Maru would
be costly, difficult

Camera-equipped drone would
help decide method of salvage

Japan defense chief: 'Outrageous'

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

A week after a nuclear attack submarine rammed the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru, the Navy planned to try again today to deploy one of its remote deep-water drones in waters off of Diamond Head.

Meanwhile, a search continues for the nine missing crewmen. Joining the search today was the guided-missile cruiser USS Port Royal. A search area of more than 21,000 square miles has been covered since last Friday.

For the past two days, bad weather in waters south of Oahu has hampered the Navy's efforts to survey the wreckage with the remote-control drone Scorpio, used last year to help recover parts of the Alaska Airlines jet that crashed off the California coast.

Those recovery operations occurred at a depth of 650 feet. The Ehime Maru is believed to be down 1,866 feet.

This info-graphic by David Swann, Star-Bulletin, illustrates
some of the tools and methods being considered to help inspect
and possibly raise the Ehime Maru from 1,800 feet below the
ocean's surface. Click the image or here to
see a very large version.

Seas running from 6 to 12 feet, with winds gusting up to 50 knots, kept the civilian support vessel C-Commando, the Scorpio and special sonar scanning equipment in port yesterday.

The C-Commando and the Scorpio left Pearl Harbor this morning after the Port Royal reported that seas in the area were running about 6 to 8 feet.

Meanwhile, the Navy's second unmanned remote recovery vehicle, Deep Drone, which can work down to 7,200 feet, arrived in Honolulu on a commercial jet last night and was loaded onto the USS Salvor, a salvage vessel berthed at Pearl Harbor.

The 255-foot Salvor also helped in the combined rescue operations earlier this week until it was recalled to Pearl Harbor to await the arrival of the Deep Drone. Lt. Cmdr. William J. Nault heads the crew of six officers and 84 enlisted sailors.

The Deep Drone is under contract to Oceaneering International and has a crew of 10 civilians. It has been used in the search and recovery efforts of two airline crashes: Swiss Air Flight 111 in 1998 and Egypt Air Flight 190 a year later.

At a Pentagon news conference yesterday, Tom Salmon, director of operations in the Naval Sea Systems Command's Salvage Office, said he believes it would be "a very challenging operation" to raise the Ehime Maru.

He said it would be expensive and complicated.

Salmon said he knows of a civilian contractor that salvaged a fishing vessel from deep waters in Europe, and "they feel confident that they could probably do this job."

But first the Navy needs to know the way the Ehime Maru, or pieces of the vessel, are lying on the bottom.

That, along with the amount of damage to the vessel and the type of ocean bottom where the ship is resting, will help the Navy determine what salvage approach it might take, Salmon said.

Depending on the weather, that assessment could take about a week or two, he added.

The Navy's current plan is to try to get a map of the Pacific bottom using the side-scan sonar system to locate the vessel and any other debris, Salmon said.

Once that is done, the Navy will lower the Scorpio to look at the debris using its television and still cameras.