Navy Minehunter HMAS Yarra starts search for lost containers

The Royal Australian Navy Minehunter HMAS Yarra was due this morning to start the search for 31 containers of ammonium nitrate lost overboard from the Pacific Adventurer a week ago.

HMAS Yarra was scheduled to begin search operations in the vicinity of where the containers went overboard, seven nautical miles east of Cape Moreton at the northern tip of Moreton Island.

Transport Minister John Mickel said the Queensland Government had requested assistance under the Commonwealth Government Disaster Response Plan, known as COMDISPLAN.

Emergency Management Australia consulted with the Joint Operations Command of Australia’s defence forces, and a Navy Minehunter was identified as a suitable resource to tackle the task of locating the missing containers.

“We are fortunate to have the services of HMAS Yarra deployed in the search for these containers,” Mr Mickel said

“There are two main reasons we want to locate the containers – firstly, to determine the state they are in, the environmental risk they pose, and the prospect for their retrieval, and secondly so that our trawling industry can operate with confidence.

“As the search gets underway, each sector that is covered without the containers being located is a sector that we can advise the trawling industry it is safe for them to operate in.

“The Yarra is equipped with sonar technology for deep sea survey ­– providing us with the specialist and technological capability needed to find these containers.”

Mr Mickel said there had been no sightings of the containers since they were lost overboard seven nautical miles east of Cape Moreton at approximately 3.15 am last Wednesday.

Maritime Safety Queensland believes the containers have sunk in approximately 150 metres of water to the sea floor in the general vicinity of where they went overboard, and has done preliminary modelling of where the containers might be.

Mr Mickel said, however, that he did not want to raise expectations that the containers would be readily or even eventually located.

“While we can base the modelling on a number of known factors together with certain asumptions, the starting point is we do not know where the containers are.

“We are commencing the search at a certain point, but this could well be a case of trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

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