ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dents on the hull of the Ehime Maru are seen in this
video footage released in February by the Navy.

Navy needs more time
to lift the Ehime Maru

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

After nearly two weeks of dredging around the bow of the Ehime Maru, now buried in mud 2,000 feet below the ocean's surface off Diamond Head, the Navy says it probably will not be able to lift the vessel until sometime next month.

On Aug. 2, Rear Adm. William Klem, who heads the Navy's unprecedented $40 million recovery operation, set a mid-September target date to raise the 190-ton Ehime Maru and move it 12.5 miles to shallow waters near the Honolulu Airport reef runway.

The Navy wants to complete the entire process by the end of October, before rough, unpredictable winter weather begins. The process will include sending divers to explore the ship's cabins to recover the remains of any of the nine people missing after the Ehime Maru was sunk Feb. 9 by the nuclear submarine USS Greeneville.

"The window" established by the Navy, Klem said, was "based on weather and effectiveness of our equipment."

"It's not just how fast are the winds blowing and how big are the waves going to be," Klem said in August, "but what is the current at each level all the way down to 2,000 feet, and as we move the ship into shore, how the currents are varying as we move the ship so we know what effect there will be on the Ehime Maru as it is moved through the water."

Yesterday, Lt. Cmdr. Andre Laborde, Navy spokesman, said the latest information on the current recovery operation is that "dredging will take some time" before the salvage experts can attach a line to the pipes on the bow of the sunken vessel. That procedure is needed to lift the front of the Ehime Maru so special metal lifting plates can be placed under the pilot house of the boat.

The Navy has been able to place only a set of metal lifting plates under the stern of the Ehime Maru near the pilot house. The bow and stern lifting plates will be attached to a special cradle. Heavy-duty linear winches on the civilian-contracted Rockwater 2 will then raise the cradle and the Ehime Maru 90 feet off the bottom.

However, several complications have occurred in trying to rig the bow line to the Ehime Maru, and the bow is still buried in mud.