Marine Salvage Project ReportSaving Coral ReefsSaving Coral ReefsPhoto: Global Diving & Salvage One shipwreck at a timen the summer of 1991, a 121 ft. long Reef, a non-vegetated wildlife refuge ning process: the safety of personnel Taiwanese long line ? shing vessel, reef located 35 miles to the northwest of and equipment, followed closely by the Hui Feng #1, ran aground on Palmyra. mitigating the potential of further dam-Ian atoll in the middle of the Pa- At Palmyra the problem lay in a na- age to the extremely delicate living coral ci? c. With a footprint of just 4.6 sq. mi., tive marine organism called coralli- and reef structure. Palmyra Atoll forms the most northern morph that was effectively smothering Working together a plan was devel-vegetated island in the Northern Line Is- the corals surrounding the wreck. Re- oped to remove the wreckage from the lands, lying some 1,000 miles south of searchers have made observations over inner-tidal areas. Flat deck scows were Honolulu. The atoll has a long storied several years that showed the spread of designed and built with shallow draft to past and is now a national monument the organism progressively increasing transit the debris across the coral reef and wildlife refuge, cooperatively man- due to the leaching of iron into the envi- areas to the main barge that provided aged by the US Fish & Wildlife Service ronment as the wreck corroded serving logistical support and housing for the (USFWS) and The Nature Conservancy. as a fertilizer of sorts. At Kingman the project. Palmyra Atoll encompasses some of problem was not corallimorph, but an In total, the combined crew of 12 the last remaining near-pristine reef en- invasive form of algae feeding off nutri- worked 79 days with 880 hours spent vironments, boasting an intact marine ents released from the dissolving wreck- underwater to cut, rig and remove over predator-dominated marine ecosystem age of a burned ? shing vessel. 970,000 pounds of steel and debris, as where species’ richness and diversity In September of 2012, the U.S. Fish well as 605 gallons of hydrocarbons. abound, with more than 176 species of & Wildlife Service’s issued an RFP for Susan White, the USFWS’s project hard coral and 418 species of reef ? sh. the removal of the two wrecks from Pal- leader for the removal effort, said the Through monitoring of the reefs, a slow myra Atoll and Kingman Reef. Global debris was “the equivalent of 67 large and insidious destruction was identi? ed Diving & Salvage, Inc. reached out to elephants or 31 city buses and was re-by the Hui Feng #1 and the other wrecks Curtin Maritime to collaborate. Several moved to protect some of the world’s deteriorating on Palmyra and Kingman factors were fundamental in the plan- most pristine coral reefs.”May 201416 MTRMTR #4 (1-17).indd 16 MTR #4 (1-17).indd 16 5/13/2014 10:07:36 AM5/13/2014 10:07:36 AM