The survey vessel EVA-316 departed from the Estonian harbour Hundipea on Monday, July 1 at 23:10 and arrived at the wrecksite of MV Estonia at 09:00 the following morning. The survey took place between 10:00 to 22:00 on Tuesday and 06:30 to 18:30 on Wednesday. EVA-316 arrived at Hundipea harbour on Thursday, 4 July at 03:45.
Altogether 17 dives were made with the ROV – seven on the first and ten on the second survey day. The survey started from the west and continued eastwards to the wreck. If the westward targets were mostly isolated – meaning one dive for one object – then the eastward dives covered also the main debris field southwest of the wreck where tens of objects could be seen during one dive. During the last dive, additional filming was done in the area of the wreck, which was previously behind the ship's bow ramp, which was recovered from the seabed in July 2023.
“The most important find of this survey was the rotatable part of the starboard side ramp railing, which was located 485 meters west from the visor location on the seabed,” concluded Tauri Roosipuu, Marine Casualty Senior Investigator at OJK. “This item is an important evidence, because it is the most westward object found from the seabed that undoubtedly originates from MV Estonia. It also confirms again that the ramp opened as it couldn’t fall off from the vessel with closed ramp and outrules again that the railings were cut off after the sinking of the vessel.” This evidence was recovered from the seabed and transported to Tallinn. No more items were recovered from the seabed during this survey.
This survey was the follow-up survey for the high-resolution seabed imaging sonar survey conducted in November 2023. About 300 presumably man-made objects were detected and located by the sonar survey in the area of the proposed sinking tracks of MV Estonia. The purpose of the follow-up survey was to identify the detected objects seen on the sonar image, verify whether these originate from MV Estonia and from which part of the vessel, if possible. This was done by observing and filming some of the objects with the underwater camera carried by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The vessel’s sinking track will be used as an input for the numerical flooding simulations to be started this summer and completed a year later.
The additional follow-up marine survey was conducted thanks to the cost-effective co-operation between OJK, the Estonian State Fleet and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).
ESIB intends to publish the results of this ROV video survey together with the results of sonar survey conducted last year in September 2024 after completing the analysis of the collected data.
