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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Please Explain Why This Makes Sense

A shrimp trawler dragged out to sea by the tsunami last year in Japan is floating off the coast of Alaska.  It is adrift, and potentially a danger to navigation, and it has more than 2000 gallons of diesel fuel aboard.  The Coast Guard is planning to sink it in deep water.  As a number of commenters on the article have pointed out, the fuel alone is worth $10,000.  The ship is worth $200,000 as scrap steel.  So why does it make more sense to sink it then for a salvager to tow it to a dismantler, assuming that it isn't worth something still as a ship?  (It is still floating, many months after the disaster).  If it cost $50,000 to grab it and drag it to a dismantler, it would still be profitable.

Do any of my readers have an ocean-going tug?  I understand that under the law of maritime salvage, it is ours for the taking.

UPDATE: There is still a country where initiative and ambition exist...Canada.

UPDATE 2: The article now says that the Canadians who were planning to tow it apparently found that they couldn't--so cannon fire is still the plan.

5 comments:

  1. Maybe the Coast Guard really wants some target practice?

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  2. It makes sense what you said so why hasn't anybody grabbed it yet?

    I doubt the fuel is worth anything though after sitting more than a year.

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  3. What mollo said - that fuel is trash now. Diesel and gasoline both go bad over time if not filled with stabilizer, and especially diesel in a wet environment.

    Now that fuel is an expensive hazmat mess (at least, legally - it won't be particularly "hazardous", but you can't just dump it either), which probably explains the lack of salvage; combine all those costs - and the non-zero cost of actually demolishing it to sell the steel - and it might well be unprofitable to salvage.

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  4. FoxNews is reporting that a Canadian fishing operation has claimed salvage rights to the vessel. The USCG is delaying any attempt at sinking the ship for now.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/05/us-to-sink-ghost-ship-dislodged-by-japan-tsunami/?test=latestnews

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  5. Where is the Environmental Impact Statement for this action? How will the fuel be prevented from polluting the ocean?

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