Tragedy At Sea

From news@nature.com...

Russian marine biologist was drowned, and an Italian badly hurt, when the research vessel on which they were working was rammed by a cargo ship and sank off the coast of Sicily on 3 August. The ship, Thetis, was measuring marine biomass around seven kilometres off the island's coast when it was struck by the Heleni, a 55,000-tonne Panamanian container ship. It was morning, and the weather was foggy. "The scientists on board say it was like an apocalypse when the container ship came at them out of the blue," says Ennio Marsella, head of the CNR Institute for Coastal Marine Environment in Naples, whose scientists were in charge of the project. The 200-tonne Italian vessel sank in minutes, giving no time to use lifeboats or life jackets. "It was clear we had no way out," says Giusy Buscaino of the CNR, head of the mission, "so I ran towards the stern, then dived and swam away as fast as I could. It was so surreal to look back and find no noise, no vessel, the big cargo vessel going on like nothing happened." The man killed, bioacoustics expert Petr Mikhejchik, 53, of the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fishery and Oceanography in Moscow, was probably trapped working in one of the labs below deck....Port authorities in Sicily had repeatedly warned the Heleni that there were other vessels nearby. The authorities had also issued an order on 24 July for all ships to keep at least 1,000 metres from the Thetis, which had just left port.