The salvage of the stranded car carrier Golden Ray is accelerating. Salvors on the heavy-lift barge VB-10,000 are using a heavy chain to cut the ship into sections to be carried away by barge. The recently completed the second cut, separating the ship’s stern, which has been lifted onto Barge 455-8 to be hauled away to a recycling facility in Louisiana to be scrapped. On-water response teams recovered oil released from the wreck during lifting operations.
The first cut, which separated the bow of the ship, took approximately three weeks to complete while the second cut took only eight days. There is some concern that now that the bow and stern sections of the ship have been removed, that managing oil and debris from the ship will become more challenging.