El Faro finally discovered - beneath 15,000 feet of water

Not clear whether any of her crew survived

El Faro sailed into Hurricane Joaquin last month and disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a life ring, cargo, wood, styrofoam and the worries from friends and family of her crew.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Monday that the debris found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday belongs to el Faro, which was found beneath 15,000 feet of water east of the Bahamas.

The National Transportation Safety Board took to Twitter, announcing the U.S. Navy is continuing to survey the area near the wreckage.

Peter Knudsen, the spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said, "The ship will certainly not be recovered; the ship is going to stay there. The containers are too deep to do any kind of recovery mission. If human remains are encountered, an attempt would be made to recover them."

The deep ocean vehicle called CURV-21 will be remotely operated to record a video documenting the wreckage and debris field. It will also be used to recover the ship's black box, which would have captured the crew's conversations on the bridge and should contain the ship's equipment information, such as the engine's performance and rudder movements.

Knudsen reported sonar-generated images appear to show the ship is right-side-up, which will make the recovery of its black box much easier.

The Navy reported the CURV-21 is designed to work as deep as 20,000 feet in seawater but Jim Staples, a ship captain and maritime consultant, said "it's very, very challenging at those depths. Imagine operating something under about two-and-a-half-miles of water with underwater currents and total darkness. Then you have the weather at the surface to account for."

Investigators hope to identify significant signs of damage as well as whether the crew was able to deploy life rafts. Initial investigations into El Faro's disappearance yielded little beyond debris and one body that was so decomposed it was deemed impossible to identify.

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