BANGOR, Maine — The National Transportation Safety Board will resume its search for El Faro’s voyage data recorder on Monday, a board spokesman said Sunday.
The loss of El Faro and its 33 crew members near the Bahamas during a hurricane in October 2015 has been deemed the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel since 1983.
Five of the crew, including the captain, had connections to Maine.
The mission for the second search is to retrieve the ship’s data recorder and better document the wreckage to help determine exactly why and how the ship sank, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a news release.
The second search is being conducted in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The research vessel Atlantis is scheduled to depart Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday.
The vessel is scheduled to search the accident site for 10 days before returning to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, about May 5.
The Atlantis will carry a sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicle, AUV Sentry, to search for the voyage data recorder.
The recorder is expected to contain critical information for the National Transportation Safety Board and U.S. Coast Guard investigators. Besides basic navigational data, the recorder memory is expected to contain voice data from El Faro’s navigation bridge in the hours before the ship sank in more than 15,000 feet of water. In addition to the information contained in the recorder, investigators will obtain digital high-resolution imagery of the hull and wreckage of El Faro.
Last November, the National Transportation Safety Board worked with the U.S. Navy aboard the USNS Apache to successfully find El Faro and conduct surveys of the debris field.
The first search revealed that the upper two decks, including the navigation bridge, had separated from El Faro’s hull and were about a half mile away on the ocean floor. The main mast of El Faro and the attached voyage data recorder were not found during the first search.
El Faro went down on Oct. 1, 2015, during Hurricane Joaquin after the captain reported losing propulsion and taking on water while on a regular weekly cargo route between Florida and Puerto Rico.
The last communication between the ship and the mainland was made at 7:20 a.m., according to previously published reports. The cargo carrier lost propulsion and was listing after encountering the hurricane north of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas, the captain said in his request for help.
The crew included 28 Americans and five Poles. Among crew members lost were 53-year-old Capt. Michael Davidson of Windham, a 1988 graduate of Maine Maritime Academy; Michael Holland, 25, of Wilton, a 2012 graduate of Maine Maritime; Danielle Randolph, 34, of Rockland, 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. Another crew member, Mitchell Kuflik of Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Maine Maritime in 2011.