Today in Japan, the US Navy officially decommissioned the minesweeper USS Guardian.  On the Tubbataha Reef, where the ship ran aground on January 17, salvage operations have again been delayed by bad weather.  The salvage plan is to cut the ship into pieces and to haul it away.  Salvage divers have been cutting away at the crippled ship and the crane ship MV Jascon 25 has been hoisting the sections onto barges.  The salvage operations have been repeatedly delayed by wind and waves.  The USS Guardian ran aground on a reef in the Philippines’ Tubbataha National Marine Park. The park is a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, 640 kilometers (400 miles) southeast of Manila.

Bad weather delays removal of ‘Guardian’ anew