„This spring, the next investigation stage is planned to start at the shipwreck site of MV Estonia, where the most extensive operations will be a photogrammetric survey, a ferromagnetic survey, and a laser scanning survey. Photogrammetry and laser scanning will be employed to generate an accurate 3D image of the wreck,” said Rene Arikas, head of the Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau. „The marine surveys will take approximately 10 days to complete, for which we will need to find professional partners through public procurement procedures, which have now been launched. The exact dates for the surveys will be established once the winning bidders have been determined for all of the contracts and once the work schedules have been agreed upon.”
During the meeting in Helsinki, the international team of investigators examined for the first time video footage captured in 1996 and 1997 at the shipwreck site of MV Estonia, when the wreck of the ferry was emptied of fuel. „Nearly 240 hours of video footage have been recorded on VHS tapes of the work carried out on the wreck at the time. The tapes had previously been kept in storage in Finland,” Arikas explained. „The quality of the footage on these tapes is better than expected: the work was carried out during the spring/summer period when underwater visibility was excellent. We intend to examine the videos in depth and to digitise and archive them.”
As part of the investigation, a series of interviews will be conducted with the crew and passengers who survived the sinking of the ferry. Interviews with Swedish survivors have already been completed, while survivors from Estonia, Finland, and other countries will be interviewed this spring and summer.
Questions of ownership of the wreck of MV Estonia were also explored at the meeting.
