Freighter aground off Port Everglades

[trigfunctions]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...9may19,0,4187820.story?coll=sfla-news-broward

Lou Fisher, a natural resource specialist for Broward County, was among four dive teams that inspected the damage Thursday morning. The boat, which draws 37 feet of water, left a scar as long as its hull on the reef, he said.

"The impacts are over 600 feet long," Fisher said. "Areas where the hull contacted the bottom are flattened out. There is a gouge where the bow went aground."

The Spar Orion with its crew of 22 was on its way to Port Everglades from Sweden when it strayed from a deep-water anchorage offshore and became stuck on the innermost of three reefs that parallel Fort Lauderdale beach. It was the 11th large vessel to run aground offshore since 1994, county officials said.

"We saw a cracked reef framework, crushed coral, soft corals crushed, hard corals crushed, and sponges that were severed at the base," Fisher said. "All the types of impact we've seen with other ship groundings."

 

[SLY_GUY]

Man, this makes me mad, and from what I remember, the fines levied against the freighter companies are a joke.

 

[mike_s]

so what will they do?

fine the ship?
criminal charges against crew/captain?
hold the ship for some determined time?
etc?

 

[Scuba_Jenny]

This is a sad discovery.

 

[trigfunctions]

An update - I spoke to one of the County divers who inspected this site after the incident. The ship bulldozed about 1.5 acres of the limestone reef. The incident was about 600 feet from the mooring balls for the area known as The Caves. The ship owner will have to make repairs to the reef and pay a large fine, but the details are still being worked out.

The Caves is a nice little diving area. It was lucky that it wasn't destroyed. The anchorage areas are being reevaluated to try to prevent future groundings.