Cost of Recovering Ehime Maru Hits $60 Million

The cost of trying to recover a Japanese fishing vessel that was sunk by a U.S. submarine last winter has already reached $60 million, far more than the $40 million initially expected, the Navy said.

Heavy seas and engineering challenges contributed to the cost overrun, the U.S. Pacific Fleet said Saturday. Officials would not estimate how much more the operation would cost.

The effort to raise the Ehime Maru from its resting place 2,000 feet below the ocean’s surface and tow it to shallower water had been expected to be completed by mid-September.

But the Navy said Friday that the operation probably won’t be finished until late October. Towing the Ehime Maru from where it went down nine miles south of Diamond Head to shallower water off Honolulu International Airport would allow divers to search the vessel for bodies.

Nine people, four of them teenagers, were killed when the Greeneville hit the 190-foot fishing vessel Feb. 9 as the attack submarine executed a rapid surfacing drill. Twenty-six others aboard the boat were rescued.