Phoenix International Assists in Locating El Faro
Phoenix International (USA), under the operational direction of the U.S. Navy’s Office of the Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV), successfully located the U.S. flagged cargo vessel El Faro using the U.S. Navy’s deepwater sidescan sonar search system, Orion. The ship was found in approximately 5,000 metres of seawater (msw) in the vicinity of Crooked Island in the Bahamas.
Following the search and location of the missing ship, the Phoenix team launched the U.S. Navy’s deepwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), CURV-21, to verify and visually inspect the wreckage. Over the next several days, Phoenix will continue to identify and recover priority items, such as the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR), as directed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation team.
Phoenix operates the ORION search system, the CURV ROV, and several other U.S. Navy search and recovery assets under its multi-year Undersea Operations contract with SUPSALV. Search operations were conducted from USNS Apache (T-ATF 172), which was mobilised from its homeport in Little Creek, VA.
