The key objective of the two-week National Transportation Safety Board mission in April will be to locate the voyage data recorder or “black box” dislodged from the TOTE Maritime general cargo vessel when it sank Oct. 1 during Hurricane Joaquin.
The National Transportation Safety
Board announced Thursday it will launch a second expedition to search for
evidence in its investigation of the loss of the TOTE Maritime cargo ship El Faro, which sank in the Atlantic during Hurricane
Joaquin on Oct. 1, 2015, resulting in the death of 33 crew members.
“A key objective of the upcoming
mission, which is expected to begin in April and last about two weeks, is to
locate the voyage data recorder (VDR) and to provide investigators with a more
extensive and detailed survey of the shipwreck. The exact launch date will be
announced later,” NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart said in a statement.
“The voyage data recorder may hold
vital information about the challenges encountered by the crew in trying to
save the ship,” he added. “Getting that information could be very helpful to
our investigation.”
NTSB located the 790-foot ship was
under about 15,000 feet of water near the Bahamas on Oct. 31, and the ship and
debris field were documented with a video camera mounted on an underwater
remotely operated vehicle.
Video revealed that the navigation
bridge structure and the deck below it had separated from the ship. The missing
structure included the mast and its base where the VDR was mounted. Neither the
mast nor the VDR was found in the vicinity of the navigation bridge structure
during the initial search mission, which was completed on Nov. 15.
NTSB said after investigators reviewed
the data and video from the initial search, leadership determined that a return
mission to El Faro was
warranted.
During the return mission, a search
area of approximately 13.5 square miles will be photo- and video-documented by
Sentry, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that will be launched from the
research vessel Atlantis, which
is owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI). Sentry can work at depths of nearly 20,000 feet and can be
equipped with a wide array of sonar, camera and other sensors.
If the black box is located, another
mission using a remotely operated vehicle capable of recovering the recorder
will be initiated.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., had
previously urged the NTSB to make the return voyage to find the voyage data
recorder, and commended the NTSB for its decision today in a speech on
the floor of the Senate.
“We owe to it not only to the
families of the lost mariners aboard the El Faro, but to the future safety of all those who travel
on the high seas,” said Nelson. “It’s up to us to not only understand
what happened, but to do what we can to insure that it does not happen in the
future.”
Earlier this week, Nelson also called
for an investigation into the encounter of the Royal Caribbean International
cruise ship Anthem of the
Seas with a massive storm with hurricane-force winds
and huge waves off the Carolinas over the weekend. That ship returned to its port
of departure in Bayonne, New Jersey Wednesday night, at which point passengers
were able to disembark.
“The thing about this
storm was that it was forecast for days. So why in the world would a cruise
ship with thousands of passengers go sailing right into it?” Nelson said
Monday in another speech on the Senate floor.
