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The Parbuckling Project
Costa Concordia
Here's how the Costa Concordia wreck is being removed
Workers have to undergo a four-day mountain climbing course before starting the job to equip themselves for the dangerous conditions.
IT’S BEEN MORE than a year since the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef off the shore of Isola del Giglio, in the Mediterranean, leading to a wreck that cost 30 passengers their lives.
Yet the enormous ship is still sitting off the Italian coast, mostly submerged, in the middle of a nationally protected marine park and coral reef.
The ingenious salvage operation —called the “Parbuckling Project” — involves building a series of underwater platforms onto which the Costa Concordia will be lifted upright (parbuckled), then floated up and towed away.
It is now fully underway: The underwater platform has been partly installed, and more than a third of the floatation devices that will hopefully lift the ship out of the sea have been filled and put in position.
These photos reveal how the salvage operation — the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive ever undertaken — is going so far.
Work on the operation goes on 24/7
It's a race against time
One of the underwater platforms which will support ship when it's upright
Platform number 4 will be installed by early March
Platforms are embedded in holes drilled in seafloor
Drill bit is enclosed in large tube to keep debris from contaminating site
Anchor block for platform is lowered to seafloor
A grout bag, to be filled with sand and cement, provides support
The funnel is to be removed to make working on board easier
111 salvage divers work in 45-minute shifts around the clock
They live in these floating barracks, next to the wreck
All workers have to take a four-day mountain climbing course
Workers use these anchors to keep from falling into water
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