The Tribune

By LETRE SWEETING

Tribune Staff Reporter

lsweeting@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY General Ryan Pinder said 12 per cent of a ship that sank off Abaco last year has been salvaged.

He said after the exercise, an environmental assessment of the incident will be undertaken to determine legal action against the ship owners.

The Onego Traveller cargo ship, registered in Antigua and Barbuda, sank with heavy fuel on board on December 29, 2022.

In February, Mr Pinder said the government ordered the ship to be removed from The Bahamas within 45 days.

In April, following the selection of the salvage company for salvaging of the ship, Mr Pinder said his office was looking at imposing fines for the delay in removing the vessel.

The Ministry of Transport and Housing said on January 11 that the vessel had some 3,119 tons of steel coils at the time of the incident, along with an unspecified amount of heavy fuel.

“The salvage company has a barge on site,” Mr Pinder told reporters yesterday. “They’ve been on site for maybe a couple of months now, maybe a month and a half, undertaking salvage activities on that vessel. They have removed 144 steel coils, so those are the big steel coils out of the cargo hold and have transported those to Freeport for storage.

“Now they are back on site, and they have started to cut up the ship to move it. They have had certain challenges with the weather. As you can imagine, you know the weather we have been having lately, and they’re on the oceanside, so the wind and the waves really build up when the weather gets bad there. So they’ve had some delays because of the weather, but the barge is on site.

Mr Pinder said officials are “under the mercy of the process and the weather” regarding when the rest of the ship will be salvaged.

He added: “Once that ship has been salvaged and removed, we can put divers in the water through the Department of Environmental Protection and Planning to make an assessment to see the scope of damage that may have occurred to our reefs and other ecosystems.

“Then at that point in time we will assess new litigation, fines, or some other penalty to issue.”