VICTORIA, British Columbia (28 Mar 2007) -- About 425 metres beneath the waves of remote Wright Sound, the Queen of the North lies silently on the floor of the ocean. The ill-fated BC Ferries vessel has been seen by very few people since it sank March 22, 2006: Keith Shepherd is one of them. Shepherd is the general manager of the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility, based at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney. The not-for-profit group operates the unmanned ROPOS mini-sub, an underwater research vehicle that's usually used for deep-water scientific projects in areas that divers normally can't reach. The federal Transportation Safety Board contracted Shepherd's company last year to assist with a site survey of the sunken ferry and attempt to recover its navigational computer and other onboard equipment crucial to the board's investigation. About the size of a Mini Cooper, the submarine is equipped with lights, cameras, manipulator arms and other specialized tools. The mini-sub had to be modified substantially for the Queen of the North operation in order to survey the submerged ship's interior. "Typically, we do scientific work, so we have a lot of lighting spread out on the 'bumper bar' up high, and our cameras are mounted lower down," Shepherd explained. Since the team knew that the sub would have to reach into the bridge area and peer through windows, the camera set-up had to be adjusted and a new exterior frame custom-built for the mini-sub's lights. The manipulators were also repositioned so they could more easily reach through windows and hatches. The remote-controlled sub was gently lowered over the sunken ferry in mid-June last year, after the safety board investigation team and the eight-person CFFS crew went over every detail of the mission. CFFS also worked with the RCMP at one point to see if any trace could be found of Gerald Foisy and Shirley Rosette, the two passengers who were never found after the ferry sank. The CFFS crew mounted cameras on long poles that were inserted through windows so operators could look deeper into the interior of the vessel. According to Shepherd, the two bodies were nowhere to be seen. | | ROPOS mini-sub The pressure in the vicinity of the ferry is about 600 pounds per square inch, too great to enable ordinary scuba divers to search the vessel. A diver encased in a more cumbersome "hard suit" could have worked that deep, but wouldn't have been able to remove large panes of glass and pry open doors as efficiently as the sub. It is designed to operate as deep as 5,000 metres, so working at the Queen of the North site was well within its capabilities. The modifications to the mini-sub were crucial in the safety board's investigation of the accident. "There was a navigation system that was basically just a PC and we reached in and recovered that," Shepherd said. "The TSB (took) all that stuff away and I believe they were able to get all the information off the hard drive." The BC Ferries report was released Monday, but the safety board report isn't expected for a couple of months. The Queen of the North dive was a considerable departure from the open-water research projects usually undertaken by CFFS. Not only was the sub crew mindful of the two passengers still listed as missing, but they also had to deal with technical challenges and potential hazards associated with working on the sunken ferry. "Just working around a shipwreck, instead of a scientific area, is different," Shepherd said. SOURCE - Victoria NewsSCUBA FORUMDISCUSS THIS TOPIC - Dive in and have your say at Scuba Forum |
