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| Images showing the wreckage of the San Juan. |
After a year since 44
Argentine sailors vanished aboard a submarine, the wreckage was found.
“If we had a speck of hope, now there is none left,”
said Gisela Polo, the sister of Esteban
Alejandro Polo, 32, one of the sailors who died. “We’ve seen the images.
They described the depth where it was found. It makes no sense to keep talking
about him in the present tense as if he were still alive.”
Ocean
Infinity, a Houston-based ocean-mapping company hired a few months ago, found
the submarine nearly 270 nautical miles from the port of Comodoro Rivadavia in
Chubut Province and about 3,000 feet under water. The company used unmanned,
robotic devices to find it.
Argentina’s
government signed a contract with Ocean Infinity that guaranteed the company
$7.5 million if it found the submarine. The deal came after many crew members’
relatives accused the government of abandoning the search. Dozens of them set
up a makeshift camp outside the presidential palace in Buenos Aires for 52,
demanding that a private company be hired to look for the submarine.
The
submarine was found in an area that was searched intensively and is filled with
canyons and that became a focal point after the Vienna-based Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which has sensors around the globe to
monitor nuclear tests, recorded an incident deep in the ocean that was
consistent with an explosion.
“This is the area where we had assigned 90
percent of probability for it to be located,” said Vice Adm. José Luis Villán,
the head of the Argentine navy. “All the navies looked in this area but absent
the technology that Ocean Infity, we had not found it,” Mr. Villán said.
The
Norwegian-flagged Seabed Constructor vessel operated by Ocean Infinity was scheduled to leave the coast of
Argentina on Nov. 15, as the 60-day search contract was up and the
crew was scheduled to head to South Africa in preparation for its next mission,
said Oliver Plunkett, C.E.O. of Ocean Infinity. The company wanted to return in
February to continue the search. But a member of the team found something worth
postponing the departure by a few days so as to inspect more closely.
It was the
San Juan.
“The remarkable thing about it, it was
literally the last thing we were going to do,” Mr. Plunkett said. “It is a
truly unbelievable moment, in the last hour on the last day.”
Many
relatives of the victims received the news in Mar del Plata, a port city where
they had already gathered in the last few days to commemorate the one-year
anniversary of the disappearance.
Some
relatives said the news, although painful, brought a measure of closure.
“I had already assumed he died,” said María
Itatí Leguizamón, the 33-year-old wife of Germán Oscar Suárez, a radar operator
on the vessel who was 29 when the San Juan vanished. “But I couldn’t help it.
There was a part of me that kept holding on to the hope that he could still be
alive. But now I know for sure and I can mourn.
“It’s strange how I feel such a mixture of
happiness that they found it but also immense sadness. I just can’t describe
it,” she said.
Ocean
Infinity began its search on Sept. 7. Three naval officers and four relatives
of crew members accompanied Ocean Infinity personnel aboard the ship. It
involved “technology never before used during the localization of a submarine,”
the navy said at the time.
The company
would deploy “Autonomous Underwater Vehicles,” which are unmanned, robotic
devices equipped with sonar and high-definition cameras that can function to a
depth of almost 20,000 feet.
Ocean
Infinity said Saturday that the wreckage of the San Juan was found by five such vehicles. The devices were
operated by 60 crew members on board the Seabed Constructor.
“Our thoughts are with the many families
affected by this terrible tragedy,” Ocean Infinity’s C.E.O., Oliver Plunkett,
said. “We sincerely hope that locating the resting place of the ARA San Juan
will be of some comfort to them at what must be a profoundly difficult time.”
Mr. Plunkett said he hoped the “work will lead
to their questions being answered and lessons learned which help to prevent
anything similar from happening again.”
