Posted on 01/19/2005 1:33:05 AM PST by nickcarraway
SINGAPORE (DPA): A U.S. Navy vessel is surveying the seabed in the Malacca Straits' shipping lanes off Indonesia's Aceh province to determine if there have been any depth changes from the massive earthquake and tsunami, a published report said on Wednesday.
No problems have been reported so far by the nearly 4,000 commercial ships that have transited the straits since the Dec. 26 tsunami, which devastated coastal communities from Malaysia to Somalia.
A warning to mariners from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), published in The BusinessTimes, said, "Major changes have likely occurred in the topography of the coastline and bathymetry" of much of the affected region.
Malaysia also plans to survey the straits, one of the world's busiest shipping lines.
The U.S. agency has been using satellites and gathering information from the field to determine if any changes have taken place, including shifting wrecks, reefs and sand waves.
Speaking to the newspaper from the Combined Support Force, Combined Information Bureau in Utapao, Thailand, Lt. Patrick Stark said that the hydrographic vessel USNS John McDonnell was surveying the seabed in the shipping lanes.The vessel will work its way around the tip of Aceh from the Malacca Straits to the west coast town of Meulaboh, Starke said, adding that the check will take weeks.
Experts said it is unlikely that the key shipping lanes of the Malacca Straits, where depths range between 20 to 60 meters, would be affected by the earthquake and tsunami, as they were shielded by the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
What a bunch of nice Zionist tools we are, helpin those fine muslim nations.
:-)
In other news, the USS San Francisco is scheduled to be deployed to the Malacca Straits...
Nothing like sonar to check things out.......
Maybe even find something we were not supposed to....
Hope they have something checking out where the San Franciso bounced into an undersea mountain, if they already done so. (I expect they have.)
as you suggest...probably already checked it out....
Sure beats the bump-in-the-night method...
Excuse me.... that's tactile confirmation of an obstruction..
Hump in the night does not require sonar.....
International shipping use those straights – more than 50,000 a year.
In particular, a huge fraction of China's oil goes there. If we ever had to get them by the balls, this is where the US Navy would do it. We better have GREAT underwater surveys of this area, so we can better plant our listening devices and mines (and operate our attack subs). GO NAVY!
Particularly “we can better plant our listening devices and mines (and operate our attack subs).”
We don’t need them running into underwater mountains.
Are we sure the sub hit a seamount?
Huh,huh?
We may never be SURE of what actually happened on that sub - security being what it is. Lots of things have happened that are not public knowledge, and that is OK.
I’ll take the Navy’s word for it. If it was a collision with another sub I don’t want to know about it.
This ship is quite good at detecting small enemy vessels.
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