Dive teams find sunken vessels south of Ship Island

Last Thursday, Harrison County Fire and Rescue, along with divers from the Department of Marine Resources, Gulfport Fire Department, and U.S. Coast Guard, searched for and found vessels that sunk under water and have been there for a couple of years.

The different departments provided divers, boats, and an underwater drone. Teams went on site south of Ship Island and discovered two vessels.

With good visibility and weather conditions, divers went down and gathered information they needed from the sunken boats and returned safely.

The U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Division started the investigation and with the help of other departments and their resources, more information can be discovered on the found tugboat and barge. Harrison County Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said, “Put it all together, it’s going to be a matter of what we can now confirm, what the vessels were, and where they were from. This is one of those operations we had great cooperation between all the agencies. This is the kind of thing that we work together doesn’t matter if it’s in the Back Bay, doesn’t matter if it’s in the Gulf of Mexico, doesn’t matter where it’s at. All agencies coming together to help one another get the information on a vessel, make sure that it wasn’t a recent vessel that somebody may have perished on and we don’t believe that’s the case. So, getting in there diving, doing photographs, doing video is going to allow all the agencies to determine who the boat belonged to, where it came from and so forth.”

The cooperation of the dive teams to return safely is a mission accomplished.