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The investigator said his team would examine the ship’s seaworthiness and the actions of its captain to help determine what caused the container ship Ever Given, where it remained stranded for six days.
Divers inspected the underside of a colossal container ship that had blocked the Suez Canal in Egypt, spotting damage to the bow but not enough to put it out of service, officials said on Wednesday.
The dives were part of an ongoing investigation into what caused Ever Given to crash on the shore of the canal where it remained stranded for six days, before being dislodged on Monday.
The ship is now anchored in Great Amer Lake, a large body of water midway between the north and south ends of the canal.
Senior investigator Captain Sayed Sheasha, who boarded the Ever Given on Wednesday afternoon, told Reuters news agency the investigation would include a review of the vessel’s seaworthiness and the actions of its captain to help determine the causes.
Divers had gone to check the hull of the ship while it was anchored in the Bitter Lakes area, a source from the channel said.
The Ever Given captain has pledged to fully comply with the investigation, Sheasha said.
“The ship will remain in the Lake District until investigations are completed,” Suez Canal Authority (SCA) Chairman Osama Rabie told a local television station on Wednesday evening, adding that ‘there was no specific timeline for the investigation.
Rabie also said investigators interviewed the crew on Wednesday.
The six-day blockade threw global supply chains into disarray after the 400-meter-long (1,312-foot) vessel stalled diagonally on a southern section of the canal, the shortest shipping route between l ‘Europe and Asia.
The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said on Wednesday that navigation had returned to normal levels, with a total of 81 vessels passing through the canal.
(Al Jazeera)Egyptian agencies Leth said on Wednesday that a total of 163 ships had passed through the Suez Canal since it reopened and that 292 ships were currently waiting.
Five liquefied natural gas vessels passed through on Tuesday, commodities analyst Kpler said in a note, adding that it appeared that the channel’s congestion was “declining rapidly.”
The SCA has scheduled expedited expedition convoys and said it hopes the backlog of ships can be cleared by the end of the week.
Moment of triumph
Dislodging the Ever Given was a moment of triumph for the members of the rescue team.
Some burst into tears and many hugged as the bow of the ship was torn off on the east side of the canal.
“We saw it on TV, and it’s completely different from what you see in front of you,” said one of the men, Mostafa Mohamed.
The unprecedented closure of the canal had increased pressure on the shipping industry, already under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic.
The six-day shutdown “would create a domino effect of delays for goods to be delivered and for the backlog of shipments to be processed,” said Diego Pantoja-Navajas, a supply chain logistics expert and vice president of WMS Cloud Development at Oracle.
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