The National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa and several local and federal partner agencies will make another attempt to remove the fishing vessel that’s been stranded on the reef near Aunuu island for more than a month.
This is the fishing vessel #1 Ji Hyun which lost power while it was operating a charter for the American Samoa Power Authority on May 14, and washed up on the reef the next day.
Efforts to remove the vessel have been hampered by several factors including Hurricane Amos, rough seas, lack of equipment and unavailability of government tugboats to pull off the vessel.
As a result of the removal operations today, the Dive Safety Training & Drill coordinated by the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa and the Dive Safety Network (private and public sector), will start tomorrow instead of today.
The drill is designed to evaluate the response capabilities of area search, rescue, response and treatment protocols in the event that an actual SCUBA diving emergency occurs in American Samoa.
