This is me, ConnorP, and the contents of my brain when it doesn't belong anywhere else, or even if it does. Various topics, various thoughts, various degrees of seriousness, but all me.
A very interesting problem, and a very interesting article.
NPR:
What do you do with a 1,000-foot wreck that’s full of fuel and half-submerged on a rocky ledge in the middle of an Italian marine sanctuary? Remove it. Very carefully.
The wreck of the cruise liner Costa Concordia, which ran aground last week, is not unlike a car accident. The first order of business is determining whether it’s worth repairing or it gets junked. Then there are the questions of how best to go about it — and who pays.
Stuck on a rocky shoal off the Tuscan island of Giglio, the ship is in Italy’s territorial waters, so the country will likely have a major say in deciding the Concordia’s fate. But leaving the wreck where it is probably isn’t an option, says Martin Davies, the director of Tulane University’s Maritime Law Center in New Orleans.
“I think it very unlikely that the Italian government would regard that as a viable option,” Davies says.
Removing a massive ship that’s run hard aground and incurred major damage to the hull, however, involves logistical and environmental issues that are just as large.
