Marine research disaster

Container ship rams research vessel

Researcher killed as Italian ship sinks in minutes.

Vincenzo di Stefano and Giusy Buscaino, left, were two of the researchers who escaped from the Thetis. AP Photo/Alessandro Fucarini

A 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.

Divers recovered his body on Monday. The remaining seven scientists and six crew members survived.

Mikhejchik was "a very reserved person, but kind, and very competent", says Buscaino. They will not abandon their project, she adds. "I never thought it was possible to die doing science — but we all think we should go on because we owe it to Petr."

Warning

The causes of the accident are now being investigated. 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.

The Thetis, launched in 2000, is equipped for biological, geological and chemical research, and has instruments worth more than 1 million (US$1.4 million). It is one of three marine-research vessels run by the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

Russian and Italian marine biologists have been working together for more than 20 years. "Their competence in marine biology and bathymetry [measurement of seafloor topography] complements ours," says Marsella.

First reports from divers say that the Thetis is badly damaged, but the CNR does not yet know whether it can be replaced. It lies only 40 metres below the surface, and scientists hope to recover some of its instruments.