Underwater work on the Fu Shan Hai wreck

On one of the newer and more interesting wrecks that rest in the Baltic Sea – the bulk carrier Fu Shan Hai, works are being carried out in order to safely pump out its fuel load. Popular with divers, the “Chinaman” sank on 31 May 2003 as a result of a collision with the much smaller container ship M/S Gdynia.

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Ten years after the events described above, the Danish Navy is back with a team of specialists to neutralise any potential future threats posed by the troublesome cargo of oil-derived mazut.

The whole operation is expected to take 3 weeks, during which several hundred cubic metres of fuel will be pumped out. The conditions in which the work is carried out do not make the task any easier. This is where the experience of professional divers, who face similar challenges every day, comes to the rescue.

The first stage of the work was to prepare the site and get to the mazut. For this purpose, specialist drills with a magnetic hoof were used, with which the ship’s plating was cut. Then, after connecting the apparatus for pumping out the fuel, it started to heat up so that it could reach the right consistency. This is necessary in order to carry out effective extraction, because at the temperature of 4C at the bottom, the mazout took the form of a thick grease.

You can read more about the bulk carrier M/S Fu Shan Hai and the circumstances of its sinking in our text from 29 November 2011.

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Source: dailymail.co.uk, ums.gov.pl