Navigation bridge separated from rest of El Faro wreck

The U.S. Navy will continue to search for the bridge, which contains a voyage data recorder that may hold clues as to what happened to the TOTE Maritime cargo ship in the hours before it sank in Hurricane Joaquin Oct. 1.    The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that the navigation bridge from the sunken TOTE Maritime cargo vessel El Faro has separated from the main part of the wreck and has not yet been located.
   NTSB noted the vessel’s voyage data recorder, a “black box” device believed to be on the bridge of the ship, also has not been located.
   Over the weekend, a Navy team using side scan sonar equipment had located a wreck it thought was the El Faro and a nearby debris field under 15,000 of water. It was located near El Faro‘s last known location on Oct. 1 when it disappeared  off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin.
   NTSB said Monday the Navy had confirmed the wreck’s identity and it explained yesterday this was done with a CURV-21 remote operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with video cameras. The ROV was used to “document both the port and starboard sides of the vessel,” NTSB said.
   “The vessel is oriented in an upright position with the stern buried in approximately 30 feet of sediment. The navigation bridge and the deck below have separated from the vessel and have not been located,” said the NTSB. “The team has reviewed sonar scans of the nearby debris field and has not identified any targets that have a high probability of being the missing navigation bridge structure.”
   The Navy plans to redeploy the Orion side scan sonar system that was used to originally locate the El Faro in order to “generate a map of the debris field to locate the navigation bridge structure,” NTSB said.