Six days after the U.S. Naval Ship Apache began searching off Crooked Island in the Bahamas for lost cargo ship El Faro, the National Transportation Safety Board announced Wednesday that no sign of the vessel had been found.
After searching since Oct. 23 with various devices, the NTSB undertook a new phase of the search Wednesday, using side-scan sonar.
The 790-foot El Faro and its 33 crew members disappeared Oct. 1 after sailing into the path of Hurricane Joaquin while en route from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico. The vessel’s sinking marked the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel since 1983.
Among 33 crew members lost aboard the ship were five with Maine connections: 53-year-old Capt. Michael Davidson of Windham, a 1988 graduate of Maine Maritime; Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, a 2012 graduate of Maine Maritime; and Danielle Randolph, 34, also of Rockland and a 2004 graduate of Maine Maritime; and Dylan Meklin, 23, a 2010 graduate of Rockland District High School and a 2015 graduate of Maine Maritime Academy. Another crew member, Mitchell Kuflik of Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Maine Maritime in 2011.
The U.S. Coast Guard called off a search and rescue mission after finding one body amid debris from the ship.
The Apache arrived at the last known location of the El Faro on Oct. 23 and searched unsuccessfully through Monday with an underwater locator device, which was towed on five search lines across the search area of 10 nautical miles by 15 nautical miles, according to a NTSB release. The device sought to detect the acoustic signal emitting from the El Faro’s “pinger,” or voyage data recorder.
According to the NTSB, the ability of the device to detect the voyage data recorder may be hampered by the orientation of the ship on the sea floor — up to 15,000 feet below the surface, according to the U.S. Coast Guard — or whether the voyage data recorder is still operational.
Even if the voyage data recorder were not damaged when the ship went down, it has a battery life of 30 days, which would end Friday.
Assuming it were not damaged when the ship went down, the voyage data recorder can preserve data without the battery, Reuters reported.
On Wednesday, searchers began using the Orion side-scan sonar system over 13 search tracks in the same search area, the NTSB said. That phase of the search will continue for 14 days. If the ship is located, the sonar system would create an image of the ship.
The NTSB was scheduled to issue another search update Thursday.