More digital high-resolution imagery of El Faro, hull and wreckage expected...

Sun, 04/17/2016 - 7:00pm

Holly S. Edwards

An underwater image of El Faro after in sank Oct. 1, 2015, off the Bahamian Coast during Hurricane Joaquin.. (Courtesy National Transportation Safety Board)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Transportation Safety Board announced Sunday it will resume searching for the vessel data recorder of the sunken U.S. flagged cargo ship, El Faro, lost off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin on Oct. 1, 2015.

All 33 of the El Faro's crew perished in the accident, including five Maine Maritime Academy graduates, two of whom hailed from Rockland.

The mission for the second search, to begin Monday, April 18, is to retrieve the ship's vessel data recorder and better document the wreckage to help determine exactly why and how the ship sank, according to the NTSB in a news release.

The second search is being conducted in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The research vessel Atlantis is scheduled to depart Charleston, S.C., on April 18. The vessel is scheduled to search the accident site for 10 days before returning to Woods Hole, Mass., sometime around Thursday, May 5.

Atlantis will carry a sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicle, AUV Sentry, to search for the voyage data recorder. The VDR is expected to contain critical information for NTSB and U.S. Coast Guard investigators. In addition to basic navigational data, the recorder memory is expected to contain voice data from the El Faro's navigation bridge in the hours before the ship sank in more than 15,000 feet of water. In addition to the information contained in the VDR, investigators expect to obtain digital high-resolution imagery of the hull and wreckage of the El Faro.

In November the NTSB worked with the U.S. Navy aboard USNS Apache to successfully find El Faro and conduct surveys of the debris field. The first search revealed that the upper two decks, including the navigation bridge, had separated from El Faro's hull and were located about a half-mile away, on the ocean floor. The main mast of El Faro and the attached VDR were not found during the first search.