On Rota, community to finish shipwreck cleanup

More the two decades ago, the Nam Sung, a fishing vessel, wrecked on Rota’s pristine coral reefs in a violent storm, yet now the island’s residents are gearing up to complete a long-running cleanup of the ship later this year.

“Anytime a vessel of this magnitude wrecks, you have the potential for pollution,” William Pendergrass, chief of Rota’s Coastal Resources Management Office said in an interview last week. “You can have hazardous materials, lubrication oil, diesel fuel, and other contaminants that can leak into the water. So there’s a real danger there.”

The Nam Sung has sat idle on Rota’s coastline since it crashed into the reef in 1982 and the rusting skeleton of its 270-ton, 165-foot long frame over the years has become an eyesore on the island’s beaches. That is, until two years ago, when local authorities began planning a cleanup.

With the help of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CRM’s main office on Saipan, officials on the island secured a small grant to begin the cleanup effort, which launched last year during the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, an annual event observed worldwide.

At its start, the project saw a host of problems, including the need to tiptoe around the habitat of an endangered snail species that called the area around the shipwreck home. Later, a fire broke out on the ship during a cleanup day, prompting a short delay of the effort. Yet the primary obstacle to getting the cleanup started, said Pendergrass, was getting the manpower needed to complete the project. And that’s where Rota’s local residents pitched in to help.

“We had to take a Tom Sawyer approach,” said Pendergrass.

Coming to the aid of the project were scores of local students and adult volunteers, including staff at the island’s branch office of the Marianas Visitors Authority. Pendergrass said that without the help of Rota’s community, the Nam Sung might have sat on the island’s coast for decades to come.

The initial cleanup efforts—done in several separate events since last year—saw the Nam Sung cut into several pieces with blowtorches, with the bulk of the vessel taken from the water and away from the marine resources it had threatened.

“We had volunteers down in the water collecting debris and taking it away,” said Pendergrass. “I really can’t thank everyone enough for their hard work.”

Now, once authorities can secure the necessary tools and funding, Pendergrass and his colleagues are planning to complete the cleanup later, possibly before the end of the year. Pendergrass said the schedule for the completion of the project will once again depend on the tides and the availability of the people needed to finish the work.