Post by ferryfast admin on Mar 24, 2006 20:03:25 GMT -5
Sub to look at sunken ferry
Ship's store of 225,000 litres of diesel fuel leaking into fishing grounds
Mar. 24, 2006. 07:50 PM
CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER — B.C. Ferries could get a first glimpse of its sunken Queen of the North as early as tomorrow afternoon, says Phil Nuytten, whose company is sending a one-person submersible down to the wreck.
Experts say whether it finds a largely intact ship or an unrecognizable mass of wreckage depends on how that final plunge to the bottom took place.
Nuytco Research Ltd. www.nuytco.com/ has been hired by the ferry operator to survey the remains of the 37-year-old vessel lying under as much as 350 metres of water.
“We should be diving late Saturday, I would think,” said Nuytten, founder and president of the North Vancouver company.
“The plan is simply to go up and survey the wreckage, see what condition it’s in and whether it’s relatively intact or not relatively intact.”
The Queen of the North sank in the midnight blackness Wednesday, about an hour after its hull was ripped open as it steamed off course over a submerged rock about 4 1/2 hours out of the north-coast port of Prince Rupert, B.C.
Two passengers are missing and presumed dead after about 100 passengers and crew scrambled into lifeboats bobbing in choppy, windswept waters.
The Nuytco sub initially will also be the eyes for the Transportation Safety Board, which has not yet arranged for its own survey of the wreck. The federal agency has jurisdiction over the site, said spokesman John Cottreau.
“We don’t have any equipment,” Cottreau said from Prince Rupert. “We would hire it and right now that’s still to be determined.”
RCMP, which is handling the disappearance of George Foisy and common-law wife Shirley Rosette as a missing-persons case, will be on board the sub’s support ship to see if it turns up any sign of the couple.
“We’re going to have members at the site with B.C. Ferries personnel,” said Const. Alain Beulieu of Prince Rupert RCMP, adding investigators are still looking into reports the couple was seen on shore after the sinking.
Nuytco’s tiny Deepworker 2000, which has been tested to depths of almost 1,000 metres, will also look for the source of leaking diesel fuel streaming to the surface and other potential contaminants, Nuytten said.
That’s a high priority for the B.C. Environment Ministry team using booms to try to contain the sheen of diesel spreading from the wreck site.
Incident commander Andy Ackerman said contracted crews have had some success deploying the booms, thanks to calmer weather. Sun and wind have also combined to break down the spill.
A shoreline cleanup assessment team, aided by a member of the Gitk’a’ta First Nation at Hartley Bay, whose residents helped rescue the ferry survivors, is focusing on sensitive areas such as clam and oyster beds.
The ship carried 225,000 litres of diesel fuel, which is welling up from the wreck “on a constant basis,” said Ackerman. Technicians are trying to calculate the flow rate to determine if it is slowing down.
Nuytten said the dive onto the Queen of the North will be the deepest wreck survey his company has carried out, far deeper than its look at the William Carson, a CN Marine ferry that sank off Newfoundland in 1977 in 150 metres with no loss of life.
But the depth should prove no challenge for the Deepworker 2000, which is tested to almost 1,000 metres. The nimble, lightweight sub routinely handles deep-sea work such as fisheries surveys and power-cable and pipeline inspections.
“It’s pitch black down there although the visibility is generally very good,” said Nuytten. “We have these big gas plasma lamps. It’ll be like a searchlight. We’ll be able to see long distances.”
What it will find is another question.
“That’s a long ways for a ship that size to fall,” said Nuytten. “I would expect there would be a lot of impact damage if the bottom is hard bottom, which it usually is in that area.”
Filled with water, with vehicles and cargo tumbled together in the stern, the 8,000-tonne, 125-metre-long ferry probably didn’t settle gracefully upright on the bottom but sped downward end-on.
Witnesses reported the ship’s bow rose vertically before it vanished beneath the surface.
“If that’s a hard-rock bottom and the ship hit it after plunging 1,250-odd feet then you can anticipate it will certainly cause a lot of damage,” said Nuytten.
It’s hard to predict how badly the ship will fare, said Capt. Jeremy Young, a marine surveyor and consultant who knows the Inside Passage waters very well.
The seabed is studded with the same kind of rugged geography visible above the water — mountains, deep valleys and crevasses that could trap the wreck.
“It probably didn’t go straight down,” Young said from Victoria. “It may have gone at an angle, it may have hit further rocks on the way down.
Despite Nuytten’s confidence, surveying the wreck will be a challenge, he said.
“You have to time it to minimize the tidal and current action and you’ve got a long way down to go,” Young said.
Ship's store of 225,000 litres of diesel fuel leaking into fishing grounds
Mar. 24, 2006. 07:50 PM
CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER — B.C. Ferries could get a first glimpse of its sunken Queen of the North as early as tomorrow afternoon, says Phil Nuytten, whose company is sending a one-person submersible down to the wreck.
Experts say whether it finds a largely intact ship or an unrecognizable mass of wreckage depends on how that final plunge to the bottom took place.
Nuytco Research Ltd. www.nuytco.com/ has been hired by the ferry operator to survey the remains of the 37-year-old vessel lying under as much as 350 metres of water.
“We should be diving late Saturday, I would think,” said Nuytten, founder and president of the North Vancouver company.
“The plan is simply to go up and survey the wreckage, see what condition it’s in and whether it’s relatively intact or not relatively intact.”
The Queen of the North sank in the midnight blackness Wednesday, about an hour after its hull was ripped open as it steamed off course over a submerged rock about 4 1/2 hours out of the north-coast port of Prince Rupert, B.C.
Two passengers are missing and presumed dead after about 100 passengers and crew scrambled into lifeboats bobbing in choppy, windswept waters.
The Nuytco sub initially will also be the eyes for the Transportation Safety Board, which has not yet arranged for its own survey of the wreck. The federal agency has jurisdiction over the site, said spokesman John Cottreau.
“We don’t have any equipment,” Cottreau said from Prince Rupert. “We would hire it and right now that’s still to be determined.”
RCMP, which is handling the disappearance of George Foisy and common-law wife Shirley Rosette as a missing-persons case, will be on board the sub’s support ship to see if it turns up any sign of the couple.
“We’re going to have members at the site with B.C. Ferries personnel,” said Const. Alain Beulieu of Prince Rupert RCMP, adding investigators are still looking into reports the couple was seen on shore after the sinking.
Nuytco’s tiny Deepworker 2000, which has been tested to depths of almost 1,000 metres, will also look for the source of leaking diesel fuel streaming to the surface and other potential contaminants, Nuytten said.
That’s a high priority for the B.C. Environment Ministry team using booms to try to contain the sheen of diesel spreading from the wreck site.
Incident commander Andy Ackerman said contracted crews have had some success deploying the booms, thanks to calmer weather. Sun and wind have also combined to break down the spill.
A shoreline cleanup assessment team, aided by a member of the Gitk’a’ta First Nation at Hartley Bay, whose residents helped rescue the ferry survivors, is focusing on sensitive areas such as clam and oyster beds.
The ship carried 225,000 litres of diesel fuel, which is welling up from the wreck “on a constant basis,” said Ackerman. Technicians are trying to calculate the flow rate to determine if it is slowing down.
Nuytten said the dive onto the Queen of the North will be the deepest wreck survey his company has carried out, far deeper than its look at the William Carson, a CN Marine ferry that sank off Newfoundland in 1977 in 150 metres with no loss of life.
But the depth should prove no challenge for the Deepworker 2000, which is tested to almost 1,000 metres. The nimble, lightweight sub routinely handles deep-sea work such as fisheries surveys and power-cable and pipeline inspections.
“It’s pitch black down there although the visibility is generally very good,” said Nuytten. “We have these big gas plasma lamps. It’ll be like a searchlight. We’ll be able to see long distances.”
What it will find is another question.
“That’s a long ways for a ship that size to fall,” said Nuytten. “I would expect there would be a lot of impact damage if the bottom is hard bottom, which it usually is in that area.”
Filled with water, with vehicles and cargo tumbled together in the stern, the 8,000-tonne, 125-metre-long ferry probably didn’t settle gracefully upright on the bottom but sped downward end-on.
Witnesses reported the ship’s bow rose vertically before it vanished beneath the surface.
“If that’s a hard-rock bottom and the ship hit it after plunging 1,250-odd feet then you can anticipate it will certainly cause a lot of damage,” said Nuytten.
It’s hard to predict how badly the ship will fare, said Capt. Jeremy Young, a marine surveyor and consultant who knows the Inside Passage waters very well.
The seabed is studded with the same kind of rugged geography visible above the water — mountains, deep valleys and crevasses that could trap the wreck.
“It probably didn’t go straight down,” Young said from Victoria. “It may have gone at an angle, it may have hit further rocks on the way down.
Despite Nuytten’s confidence, surveying the wreck will be a challenge, he said.
“You have to time it to minimize the tidal and current action and you’ve got a long way down to go,” Young said.