Contributed by Don Thompson
We now have confirmation that Ocean Infinity’s Armada 86-05 has been mobilised with the equipment necessary to conduct a renewed search for the wreckage of MH370. Armada 86-05 is docked at a marine engineering facility in Singapore with three containerised AUV ‘garages’ fastened over the vessel’s stern with other, minor, necessary features evident.
Recently, Carl A. Allen’s Allen Exploration/AllenX team publicised that an Ocean Infinity Armada 86 vessel would join their maritime wreck survey planned under the auspices of the National Museum of the Philippine’s Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage unit.
This AllenX survey is to explore the San Bernardino Strait for WWII and Spanish colonial era wrecks. The Strait separates Luzon and Samar islands. Considering the allotted duration, it’s expected that the survey will be exploratory, perhaps identifying and mapping potential wreck sites for later investigation. One of the AllenX vessels is also docked in Singapore.
The Philippines archipelago is experiencing late season typhoons, while typhoon Kalmaegi has passed through, south of the strait, a second building storm in the Pacific may add delay to this project.
While speculation has been voiced in other quarters that an MH370 search mission will have ROVs and or offshore recovery cranes to hand, that is unlikely. Very unlikely. The Hugin AUVs may be tasked to revisit potential targets, acquiring higher resolution side-scan sonar imagery and, if necessary, acquire visible spectrum images using the AUVs digital camera. Planning for any physical recovery will come later, as it becomes evident what might be achieved.
The wider Armada fleet is now engaged on projects throughout north Atlantic sea areas: A78-01 in the UK North Sea; A78-02 in the Gulf area, south of Louisiana; A78-03 in the German Bight; A78-04 has returned to Vard, Norway; A78-05 & -08 with A86-01 & -03 working off Portugal on a survey for three offshore floating wind generating sites; A78-06 in the Netherlands North Sea; A78-07 in the Stabroek block, off Guyana. Only A78-07 is conducting operations with AUVs at this time: two vessels are conducting ROV operations using deep water/heavy duty ROVs; the remaining are engaged in geotechnical and geophysical operations.
Armada 86-02 is en-route to Vancouver while A86-04 and A86-06 remain at the Vard jetty in Vung Tau undergoing trials and completion. Two other ‘legacy’ construction support vessels in the wider OI group fleet are engaged on long term projects. In contrast to some other offshore operators, it’s impressive that Ocean Infinity’s vessels are now seeing such high utilisation.
Considering the AllenX project, sIO weather prospects and repositioning time, I expect the soonest Armada 86-05 might get to the sIO is likely to be late December.