Caught between the jagged coral of an ocean reef and Filipino environmental and political concerns, the U.S. Navy says it will cut up the trapped USS Guardian and take it away piece by piece.
“Our only supportable option is to dismantle the damaged ship and remove it in sections,” Capt. Darryn James, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said Jan. 29.
The decision, James said, keeps salvage equipment in deeper water and minimizes further damage to the coral reef.
The salvage plan, he said, aims to “safely remove individual sections of the ship without causing the release of harmful materials.”
Earlier, Rear Adm. Tom Carney, commander of the salvage effort, said the ship was too badly damaged for salvors to tow her off the reef.
Two heavy lift ship-borne cranes are en route to the scene of the grounding in the western Philippines, and should arrive about Feb.1, James said. The dismantling operation is expected to take more than a month to complete.
All the ship’s fuel has been removed, the Japan-based U.S. Seventh Fleet said Jan. 25, and teams continue to take off more materiel.
“The Navy has safely transferred approximately 15,000 gallons of diesel fuel, 671 gallons of lubricating oil, dry food stores, paints and solvents contained in storage lockers, and the personal effects left behind by the crew from the ship,” the Seventh Fleet said in a Jan. 28 press release.
The 79-man crew evacuated the Guardian late on Jan. 17, hours after the ship went aground on Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea. The minesweeper had been en route from Subic Bay in the Philippines to Indonesia. Most of the crew was returned to Japan last week, and a U.S. Navy salvage team has been working on the wreck.
Tubbataha Reef is about 80 nautical miles east-southeast of Palawan island....
...The Guardian’s hull, according to the Navy, has been punctured by the coral and several compartments have been flooded. Most of the fiberglass on the ship’s port side has delaminated and come off, revealing the ship’s wooden hull.....
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Patrick H.