Navy resorts to If all attempts to lift the Ehime Maru from its 2,000-foot watery grave fail, leaving the battered craft there forever would not have any negative environmental consequences, the Navy says.
Plan B for
Ehime Maru
If all attempts to raise the vessel
fail, the environment will
not suffer, the Navy saysBy Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comThe Ehime Maru is in an area designated as an "essential fish habitat" by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.
It is outside the state's 3-mile jurisdiction but within the federal government's 200-mile "exclusive economic zone."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had been concerned about fuel or oil affecting two species of birds -- Newell's shearwater and the Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel -- said Barbara Maxfield, agency spokeswoman.
But, said Maxfield, "Both the Navy's proposal to move the vessel as well as its no-action alternative did not jeopardize the species."
In its environmental assessment, the U.S. Navy said that besides the possibility of continual slow release of diesel fuel and lube oil from the sunken Ehime Maru, the only other possible adverse effect is the danger caused by netting, hooks and lines and other obstacles left on its deck -- most of which have already been removed by the Navy in anticipation of the move.
The U.S. Coast Guard has been monitoring the deep-water site since the collision six months ago, said Chief Petty Officer Gary Openshaw, a Coast Guard spokesman, and so far, he said, "There has been little evidence of an oil spill."
"Whatever has leaked has dissipated into the water column," he said.
Since the collision Feb. 9 between the nuclear attack submarine USS Greeneville and the Ehime Maru nine miles south of Diamond Head, the Navy has been under pressure from the Japanese government to recover the bodies of nine passengers whose bodies were never found.
The Navy believes the bodies of as many as seven of the nine, who included four teenage males, are entombed in the hull.
Using a special ship, the Rockwater 2, the Navy has been working on an ambitious but untested plan to lift the 830-ton vessel -- loaded with 45,000 gallons of diesel and lube oil -- and move it to shallower waters a mile south of Honolulu Airport's reef runway.
There, in 115 feet of water, 66 Japanese civilian and Navy divers would begin a methodical search of the ship's interior for the missing passengers and recover items such as the ship's bell, anchor, nameplate and other items.
However, the Navy announced on Wednesday that its first attempts to rig the Ehime Maru with a special cradle using a coiled tube apparatus normally used to drill for oil had failed.
Now the Navy will resort to an alternative plan, which will mean raising the Ehime Maru's hull about 4 degrees so the necessary cables can be slid under the ship's hull.That maneuver will place more pressure on an already battered hull.
The heavy-lift vessel Rockwater 2 with its civilian crew left Pier 1 yesterday to attempt once again to place lifting plates under the Ehime Maru.