JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – One month after the El Faro sank near the Bahamas after becoming disabled in Hurricane Joaquin, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it may have found the wreckage in 15,000 feet of water.
Officials using sophisticated sonar equipment to scan the bottom of the ocean said it looks as if the ship is in an upright position and in one piece, but they have not made positive identification.
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A professor at Jacksonville University who specializes in marine science thinks it will be difficult for crews to reach the ship's location.
Dr. Jeremy Stalker said they will most likely send a Remotely Operated Vehicle down to the wreckage, but he says it will take the ROV about three hours to get there.
Stalker said search crews had only a rough idea where the ship would be, so he was surprised they found it as quickly as they did.
"It's remarkable how quickly they may have found something, but also it speaks to the skill of the people who were searching for this," Stalker said. "It's a long, tedious job driving the sonar slowly and looking for ping back images of something that looks like the ship. So it's remarkable how far we've come, that we can look on the bottom of the ocean so well. I guess in some ways it's good because it will bring closure to the families and it might bring some closure to what happen in this incident."
Stalker says the slower you drag the sonar, the better pictures you'll get.