Ship Salvage Workers Roll Up Their Sleeves

Workers from the company, Smit Salvage, expected to begin transferring the fuel, which weighs about 2,400 tons, to barges on Wednesday. About 200 tons of heavier oil will also have to be removed from the ship, which is on its side, half-submerged, off the Italian island of Giglio in the Mediterranean. The process is expected to take two to four weeks, depending on the weather.

The ship ran aground within a 30,000-square-mile zone that is designated a sanctuary for marine mammals, and Italian government officials and environmentalists are worried that rough seas may further damage the ship and cause a fuel leak. Company officials said that so far all of the ship’s 17 tanks are intact.

Mike Lacey, secretary general of the International Salvage Union, a trade group, said the salvage workers’ task would be a little easier because most of the fuel is diesel, which is relatively light and will not have to be warmed before pumping. “It’s not as bad as heavy fuel, but it can still make a mess,” he said.

Mr. Lacey said that crews had begun surveying the ship for damage, an initial step in determining whether repairs are feasible. “There’s damage you can see on the port side,” he said, referring to a large gash below the waterline where the ship struck rocks on Friday. “Maybe there’s similar damage on the starboard side. There’s certainly damage to the starboard structure of the ship, because she’s on the rock.”

Based in part on the salvage company’s report, the ship’s owners and insurers will have to decide whether to overhaul the ship, which cost $450 million when it was built in 2006.

“You can spend a lot of money repairing a ship like this,” said Mr. Lacey, who likened the situation to that faced by a driver and an insurance company when deciding whether to repair or total a luxury car that has been heavily damaged in an accident. “But the conclusion might very well be reached that it’s not worth it.”

If the decision is made to scrap the liner, it will be cut up in place and the pieces hauled away, he said.

But if the insurers decide on overhauling it, then the salvage workers will have to right the ship and refloat it. “It will be a very difficult operation,” Mr. Lacey said.

David DeVilbiss, a vice president of Global Diving and Salvage, a Seattle-based company that is not involved in the work, said the salvage company would work with naval architects and create a computer simulation of the flooded liner, “which is going to tell you if the ship is going to break in half when you try to right it.”

Workers would have to patch any holes in the hull first, Mr. DeVilbiss said. Then, given the weight of the 950-foot ship and the water within it, large-capacity cranes or other lifting equipment would be brought in. Mr. DeVilbiss said that workers would probably use air bags underneath the submerged portion of the ship to help right it.

They might also try to pump some of the water out of the ship to increase its internal buoyancy, although Mr. Lacey said that was not likely given the probability of heavy interior damage. “Unless you’ve patched up all the holes, all you are actually doing when you pump is circulating the Mediterranean through the ship,” he said.

Instead, once the ship is upright and much of it is above the waterline, the water could be pumped out and the ship refloated. But even that would not be simple, Mr. Lacey said.

“It’s more complicated being a passenger ship, with so many cabins and other small spaces,” he said. “It’s not like a cargo ship, where you have large open spaces.”

Once refloated, the ship would be towed to a shipyard for lengthy and expensive repairs.