Rope located in search area may point to Ashika [1]
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 - 23:06. Updated on Thursday, August 6, 2015 - 12:20.
A rope believed to be associated with the MV Princess Ashika wreckage was located yesterday evening within the vicinity of the original search area of the first mission by the TDS Voea Savea patrol vessel, Commander Andrew McMillan said this morning.
The area where the rope was located is very deep, about 100m, and divers need a recompression chamber to go down to that depth, he said.
In a joint press conference with Police Commander Chris Kelley Cmdr McMillan said that when the crew tried to recover the rope it was attached to something on the other end beneath the water.
An Australian diving team has two chambers available here and they intended to install it onto the TDS MV Pangai deck last night but an urgent medical need for the chamber was needed for a diver who had decompression illness from diving, so the work stopped and the equipment was directed to the hospital to help the de-compressed diver.
"The crew was set to return today but the weather remained poor and we are very doubtful that we would be able to conduct a dive on the rope this afternoon," he said.
"The rope is a good indicator and another piece of evidence to the puzzle but it's possible that it may not be associated with the ferry."
"We are very keen to deploy our divers out to the area to dive for the rope but the weather condition is very poor so it is very challenging," said Cmdr McMillan.
He said the depth of the rope can be up to 100m but the vessel did not have any rope on board that is 100m long but if they had tied two ropes together then it could be that long.
"But these are all manners of speculations and the rope remains a good indicator," he added.