Suez Canal salvage teams struggle to free ship blocking Suez Canal

Suez Canal salvage teams intensified excavation and dredging on Sunday around a massive container ship blocking the busy waterway ahead of attempts to refloat it, with two sources saying work had been complicated by rock under the ship’s bow.

Diggers were working to remove parts of the canal’s bank and expand dredging close to the ship’s bow to a depth of 18 meters, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said in a statement, cited by Reuters.

There was no mention of new attempts to release the ship with tugs, though canal officials and sources had said they were hoping to take advantage of high tides on Sunday and Monday to dislodge the vessel, Reuters reported.

A specialist tug registered in the Netherlands arrived and would join efforts to refloat the ship on Sunday evening, the ship’s technical manager Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) said.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ordered preparations for the possible removal of some of the ship’s 18,300 containers, SCA Chairman Osama Rabie told Egypt’s Extra News.

Any operation to lighten the ship’s load would not start before Monday, an SCA source said, as salvage teams try to manoeuvre the ship free before high tides recede next week.

The 400-meter long Ever Given became jammed diagonally across a southern section of the canal in high winds early on Tuesday, halting shipping traffic on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

At least 369 vessels are waiting to transit the canal, Rabie said, including dozens of container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels.