Communiqués

02 November 1998

There is now close to 200,000 lbs of wreckage recovered. The dragger operation has been effective in recovering material from the seabed. The dragger operation was halted on Friday evening (30-10-98) in order to make some changes in the recovery operation. The dragging operation will start up again later in the week after the modifications to the "ANNE S. PIERCE" are completed. The vessel is being modified to carry more boxes that will allow it to stay on site longer (18 hours). Once the dragging is completed each day, the ship will sail for Lunenburg where the boxes will be offloaded onto a truck which will then take the boxes to the Shearwater Jetty for sorting. The sorted material will then be sent to Hangar 'A' where it will go through the technical examination process. A ROV operation, based on the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) vessel "EARL GREY", will begin Tuesday. The ROV reconnaissance will be used to identify the size and change in the debris field. A laser line scan will be done of the debris field late next week to determine what is left on the bottom. After the laser line scan information is analysed, a further dragging operation will then commence to complete the recovery. Once this second series of dragging is completed, a final laser line scan will be carried out on the debris field to ascertain that all the wreckage has been recovered. Any remaining wreckage will be recovered. Work is continuing on the technical examination of recovered wreckage.

All evidence indicates that all four landing gears were retracted.

Heat colour reference strips are being made to guide analysis of heat-damaged material, especially metals. Construction of the jig for the nose section reconstruction is continuing. It is expected to be delivered to Shearwater next week.