At a depth of about 2,000 meters, the ship ALFA WATAN sank, hit in a military strike about 70 nautical miles east of Byala .
Over the past day, representatives of the central government in Sofia commented that it is possible to "conduct an underwater inspection" of the wreckage with the assistance of partners from the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and NATO.
EMSA currently has the capacity to conduct underwater surveys up to about 1,500 meters deep with unmanned remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), a source from the agency told Maritime.bg.
It is not yet known whether the ABLE has sunk or is adrift . There have been no reports of commercial vessels transiting the area.
On Thursday, the multi-purpose frigate VERNI (b.n. 42) of the Villingen class of the Bulgarian Navy is making a transition from Burgas in a northeasterly direction, according to an analysis by Maritime.bg. The publication could not obtain official confirmation whether the vessel will participate in the MCM activation or is sailing to survey the area where two merchant ships were hit.
The twelfth activation of MCM began with an official ceremony yesterday, which includes the ships "Captain I Rank Dimitar Dobrev" and the minehunter "Struma" from the Navy of the Republic of Bulgaria, the minehunter "Captain Constantin Dumitrescu" from the Navy of Romania and the minehunter "Akçay" from the Navy of the Republic of Turkey.
This leads to a reasonable assumption that VERNI is conducting a transition to survey the area where ALFA WATAN and ABLE were hit.
The available NASA satellite images as of October 8, which Maritime.bg has, do not have sufficient resolution to perform an analysis for the potential presence of pollution in the area of the incident, and the cloudiness is significant.
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