Saturday Morning News

Sunken Japanese Boat Found 2,000 Feet Underwater

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: As we have been reporting to you this morning, the Pentagon is telling us that it has found the wreckage of that Japanese research and fishing vessel struck by the nuclear submarine the USS Greeneville a little more than a week ago.

On the line with us from Hawaii is CNN's Gary Tuchman with the latest on all that -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Miles, it's 3:05 in the morning right now Hawaii time. It's been seven and a half days since the USS Greeneville struck the Ehime Maru, sending the Ehime Maru plunging into nearly 2,000 feet of water. And the word is right now that the remotely operated vehicles that were sent to the bottom of the sea late last night in Hawaii have found the wreckage of the Ehime Maru. It is believed that nine people are dead. They have not been found yet, the remains of their bodies, and they will be looking for them and that's something that the family members of these people want more than anything. But right now, this is something these families desperately want.

Last night here in Hawaii, 16 family members related to the nine people missing held a news conference and very emotionally said the most important thing in the world to them right now is that the vessel is found. Most of them were very realistic and realized that even though the search and rescue is still on, their relatives are not going to be found alive. But they have been saying we want the Ehime Maru found because we want our loved ones' bodies recovered.

So right now the word is these underwater vehicles have located the Ehime Maru, the fishing vessel that was struck by the USS Greeneville and now the search will begin very much in earnest for the bodies of the nine people, four of them 17-year-old students, who have now been missing for a week and a half.

Miles, back to you.

O'BRIEN: Gary, if you could just give us a little insight here as to how they discovered it. Were they using submersibles primarily to track it down, radar or sonar, that kind of thing?

TUCHMAN: Right. They have a submersible vehicle called the Scorpio II. It's a remotely operated vehicle that's capable of taking pictures, mapping the bottom. It can also pick up up to 250 pounds of wreckage at a time. They're also using a side scanning sonar device. We've heard about those devices used during plane crashes when planes go down in the ocean.

Another ROV or remotely operated vehicle hasn't even arrived on the scene yet. It's called the deep drone. That's coming from the east coast of the United States.

But right now I could tell you that this would surprise most people. We haven't talked to the operators of these vehicles yet but nobody really anticipated, and if they did they weren't saying, that they would find the wreckage or locate the wreckage this quickly. This will be a surprise to many of the family members who have been very pessimistic and very frustrated and very angry about the pace of this investigation.

The thing they're most angry about, though, these family members from this news conference last night is the fact that civilians were on patrol stations on the ship when it went down. They just can't believe that. They're flabbergasted, bewildered how that could possibly happen. That's one of the things they talked about during this news conference, one of the most emotional news conferences I've ever covered.

Everyone was speaking Japanese but you don't have to know Japanese at all to know exactly what they were saying when they were saying it. They were just so angry.

O'BRIEN: Gary, briefly, before you get away, given the depth, is a salvage operation possible or even contemplated?

TUCHMAN: Well, one thing we should point out, these particular submersibles, this isn't even very deep for those submersibles. That's one thing. Salvaging the entire ship, though, is a whole another thing. This is something the Japanese government very much wants is for this ship to be raised. However, the officials here are saying we don't know that that's physically possible. We also don't know if it's necessary.

The National Transportation Safety Board is saying that it certainly would help the investigation they're doing if the ship was raised. However, they're saying they could still do a successful job if it is not raised.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Gary Tuchman with us from Hawaii this morning, thanks very much -- Kyra.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, as Gary Tuchman brings us that information just in, we're going to go to Kathleen Koch. Evidently she's got word from the Pentagon with regard to what we've just reported. Kathleen, are you with us?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I am, Kyra. And the Navy is confirming that the Ehime Maru was found. They say that this submersible that Gary Tuchman was just describing, the Scorpio II, was dropped into the water in the location where the Navy believes that the collision occurred about 2:30 P.M. yesterday Hawaii time.

And it took, this is, was a very deep area, some, roughly 2,000 feet. Now, as Gary pointed out, this, that's not very deep for this submersible. It can actually go down and search a depth all the way down to 5,000 feet. So they dropped the Scorpio II into the water. It took it about an hour to reach the bottom. And then at that point it began sort of skimming along the bottom and looking for the wreckage of the ship.

Now, around 11:25 P.M. Hawaii time it discovered some wreckage and then it took it about another four or five minutes to move around to the stern or the rear of the ship and then was able to identify it by reading the name Ehime Maru on the rear of the ship.

All we know from the Pentagon at this point is that the craft was found upright. The Navy can't confirm what damage there is to the ship, whether any other items were found or whether any human remains might have been found at this point.

And we are told that the Scorpio II is still continuing searching the area under the water to see what else it might be able to find. And the Navy, we're going to be in touch with them throughout the morning to try and see what other information we can get from them.

Back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Kathleen Koch, thanks so much.

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