Stricken Chinese bulker breaks in two off Kamchatka
The dry bulk carrier Ai Qi Shan (Cambodia-flagged, home port of Phnom Penh), which ran aground in the Avacha Bay on Sep. 2nd, was split in half by the storm and sank off the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kamchatka Administration press office reports citing a regional government official.
The salvage ship Rostov the Great has reportedly been heading to the scene.
"The pictures obtained from the weather station based at the Cape in the vicinity of the ship allow us to believe that the ship has sunk. Now only masts of the ship are seen above the water surface," the regional government’s minister on special programs Sergei Khabarov said.
The salvage ship’s team will assess at the site the possible danger the sunken ship might pose to navigation safety and environmental impact, the official said.
The bulker with the 21 crew of China nationals on board stranded while she was preparing to make call at the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The ship owner is China-based Tong Yuan Shipping, ship agent is LLC Transflot. The vessel arrived from the port of Pusan (Korea) laden with 5232 tons of building materials.