On Tuesday morning, April 26, a team of investigators and scientists reportedly located the voyage data recorder of the ill-fated cargo ship El Faro, about 41 miles northeast of Acklins and Crooked Islands. The team aboard the research vessel Atlantis(submersible vessel) located the El Faro’s mast where the VDR was mounted, under 15,000 feet.
After examining numerous images provided by undersea search equipment, the researchers positively found that the VDR information gained during the first survey helped the research crew to find the basketball sized object, three miles under the surface.
This VDR is capable of recording sounds on the ship’s navigation bridge, also, can provide the sequence of data where the investigators could understand the events that led to the sinking of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship on Oct. 1, 2015. The upcoming challenging task is to determine how the VDR can be retrieved. The Atlantis will stay at the accident site through April 30 while the team continues the photo and video documentation of the sunken ship and debris field before returning.
The autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry which was developed with the funding from the National Science Foundation and designed and built at WHOI, was used for the investigation.
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Source: NSTB
