Instrument platform damage caused by fishing boat will push research back by six months

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 13, 2008

MOREHEAD CITY --

Scientists say a fishing boat that rammed an instrument platform built off North Carolina's coast to study water quality will delay research by six months.
A 71-foot trawler ran over the 18-by-18-foot wooden platform last month in Pamlico Sound. The rubble was removed last week by a salvager.
Rick Luettich, director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, said the collision sets the project back by six months. The platform loss was estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000.
Scientists from seven universities and government agencies designed the platform to gather data on water quality, fisheries and physical changes in the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds.
Luettich said he found out Oct. 1 that the platform was missing and only bits of wreckage were left. He later heard a trawler captain from Bayboro said he hit something in the sound during a storm. Lighting on the platform met Coast Guard standards.
"I think we were all discounting the likelihood that even a large-sized fishing boat would plow it over and steam away and live to tell about it," Leuttich said. "It is our hope that the trawler's insurance company will cover this, but we don't know that at all.
"One thing we've learned is that we've got to have something resilient enough to take at least some impact from a vessel."
The project, called the North Carolina Environmental Observation Network System, was funded by a $200,000 appropriation from the Legislature.
Before the platform, which sat on 16 pilings, was destroyed a fiberglass instrument house had been bolted on and a wireless communication system and an antenna were attached along with a wind turbine and solar panels.
More instruments were scheduled to be attached, including a weather station; instruments to measure currents, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll at different water levels; a refrigeration unit; a radar system to read wind speeds at different heights, and an acoustic fish-finder, the newspaper said.