Families of the eight South Korean crew who died on the 266,000-dwt VLOC Stellar Daisy (built 1993) are calling for the government to conduct another deep-sea search to recover a second voyage data recorder (VDR).
The Committee of Stellar Daisy Korean Families allege that mishandling of the initial VDR, which was recovered from the sunken wreck after the first survey in February, has corrupted its data.
As a result they say critical information is missing, including the dialogue between bridge crew just before the ship sank.
Now they want the South Korean government to revisit the wreck to recover the ship’s second VDR.
“Luckily there are two VDRs in the Stellar Daisy. We demand that the Korean government do a secondary deep-sea search to recover the rest," the Stellar Daisy Families said in a statement.
"We are certain that the recovery of the additional VDR will help find the exact cause of the sinking."
The Stellar Daisy sank in the Atlantic in March 2017 from catastrophic structural failure and claimed the lives of 22 of the 24-man crew. The wreck lies at a depth of 3,400-metres.
The deep-sea survey firm Ocean Infinity was contracted to locate the wreck and bring back the VDR at an estimated cost of $12m.
The families claim that Ocean Infinity removed an important section of the VDR without the permission of the South Korean government.
They further claim the company could have damaged the VDR by washing it with high pressure water.
They also say the company did not follow VDR handling procedures by failing to change the deionized water in which it was stored for three weeks.
“We feel appalled about the poor result of VDR data extraction, from which we hoped to check the voices of the crew members, which are crucial to determine the exact cause of the sinking,” the Stellar Daisy Families said.
They also point to other cases where VDR’s were successfully recovered from underwater wrecks and the VDRs correctly handled.
These include the El Faro which sank in the US in 2015 and Air France flight 447 which sank in the Atlantic in South Atlantic in 2009 to a depth of 4,000-metres.
Since the Stellar Daisy VDR was recovered the Marshall Islands flag, under which the ship was registered, has produced an accident report into the loss.
