Coasties Sink Zombie Vessel

U.S. Coast Guard sinks Japanese 'ghost ship'

The U.S. Coast Guard, firing repeated machine-gun blasts from one of its cutters, on Thursday scuttled an abandoned Japanese "ghost ship" that had been washed out to sea near Alaska by last year's devastating tsunami.

The derelict fishing vessel Ryou-Un Maru, which posed a threat to other marine traffic, sank at about 6:15 p.m. local time, nearly five hours after the Coast Guard first opened fire on the ship, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow told Reuters.

"It's confirmed," he said. "The vessel has been sunk and is no longer a navigational hazard in the area."

The cutter crew sent the Ryou-Un Maru to the ocean floor with a series of blasts from a 25mm machine-gun, firing intermittently on the drifting vessel for about an hour, then pausing as the ship caught fire and listed in the sea. The barrage resumed after a two-hour break, and the boat was underwater about two hours later.

The ship's Japanese owner has said it had no plans to salvage the vessel, and Wadlow said it had been slated to be scrapped even before it was swept away by the tsunami. The Ryou-Un Maru was among the 1.5 million tons of debris the Japanese government estimates was dragged out to sea by the immense tidal surge unleashed by last year's Fukushima earthquake, said Ben Sherman, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This boat, in this case, we know was at a particular pier, and before the tsunami it was there and after the tsunami it wasn't," Sherman said.

Back when this was first reported, on March 25th, I wondered if this wouldn't become the outcome.