The government of Guyana has told the nation that the MV Barima cannot be fully salvaged because of murky water, poor visibility, and strong currents off the Essequibo Coast. It is a reasonable-sounding explanation. It is also, by any credible measure of modern marine salvage technology, factually incorrect. Guyana1News has reviewed the technology currently deployed by professional salvage companies around the world for operations in exactly these conditions. Here is what we found.
Thirty people remain unaccounted for. The vessel is on the seabed nine miles offshore at a known position and a known orientation. The barriers cited by the government, namely murky water, low visibility, and current, are not new challenges in marine salvage. They are standard operating conditions. And the industry that addresses them professionally has been doing so for decades, with technology that is available today, deployable to Guyana within days, and entirely capable of overcoming every obstacle the government has named.
The international marine salvage industry does not stop working when the water gets murky. It deploys sonar, which does not use light. It deploys dynamic positioning, which does not require calm water. It deploys ROVs, which do not need a human diver in zero visibility. The government’s argument is not a technical assessment. It is a position.
What the Government Said
Government officials have stated publicly that the conditions at the wreck site, specifically murky water with poor visibility and strong currents, are preventing full salvage of the MV Barima. President Ali described full salvage as a last resort if other recovery efforts fail. The government has pointed to these environmental conditions as objective, unavoidable obstacles to raising the vessel from the seabed.
Guyana1News is not disputing that the waters off the Essequibo Coast are turbid and current-affected. They are. The Atlantic coast of Guyana is fed by the Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice rivers, which deposit enormous volumes of silt into coastal waters year-round. Visibility in these waters can be extremely low, and coastal currents are real. We accept those facts entirely.
What we do not accept is the government’s conclusion that these conditions make salvage impossible or even unusually difficult by the standards of modern marine recovery operations. Here is why.
The Murky Water Problem: Already Solved
The foundation of the government’s argument is that poor visibility prevents effective underwater work at the wreck site. This argument would have been technically defensible in 1980. It is not technically defensible in 2026. The reason is sonar.
Sonar does not use light. It uses sound waves, which propagate through water regardless of turbidity, silt content, colour, or darkness. When a sonar system emits an acoustic pulse, that pulse travels through the water, strikes underwater objects, and returns to the sensor as an echo. The system then analyses the echo to determine the distance, shape, size, and position of whatever it encountered. None of that process requires the water to be clear. None of it requires a diver to be able to see. The water at the Barima wreck site could be the colour of concrete and sonar would still produce a precise, detailed map of the vessel and everything around it.
Side-Scan Sonar
Side-scan sonar systems are towed behind a surface vessel or mounted on a Remotely Operated Vehicle. They emit acoustic pulses to either side and capture the returning echoes to produce a high-resolution image of the seabed and any objects on it. Side-scan sonar is standard equipment in search and recovery operations and is widely used for wreck location and large-area seafloor imaging regardless of water clarity. A system of this type can locate and map the MV Barima with precision from a surface vessel without a single diver entering the water.
Multibeam Imaging Sonar
Multibeam sonar emits multiple simultaneous acoustic beams, covering a wide area and producing real-time, high-resolution images of the underwater environment. When mounted on a Remotely Operated Vehicle, it allows the operator on the surface to navigate, identify structural features, and plan lift operations with full spatial awareness, even in complete darkness or zero-visibility turbid water. Models such as the Blueprint Subsea M750D can identify a shipwreck or large underwater structure from up to 200 metres away in completely murky conditions. These systems are standard equipment for every professional salvage company operating in river-fed coastal environments.
3D Sonar SLAM
The most advanced sonar technology currently deployed in marine salvage operations is 3D Sonar Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping, known as SLAM. This technology creates a complete, real-time three-dimensional model of the wreck and its surroundings using acoustic data alone. Operators on the surface can inspect structural features, identify access points, measure dimensions, track changes in the wreck’s position, and plan every stage of the lift operation with full spatial accuracy, in water of any clarity, in any current, at any depth within the system’s operational range. This is not experimental. It is deployed commercially by salvage companies on every continent.
Sonar technology has the ability to help locate underwater objects in deep salvage operations where murky waters may hinder camera visibility. Identifying a shipwreck or other large structure from up to 200 metres away is not a stretch for ROV-mounted imaging sonars operating in turbid conditions.
To be direct: the argument that murky water prevents effective underwater work at the Barima site is an argument about camera visibility, not about operational capability. Professional salvage teams do not rely on cameras in turbid water. They rely on sonar. And sonar is entirely unaffected by the conditions the government has described.
The Visibility Problem: What ROVs Do That Human Divers Cannot
The second element of the government’s position concerns visibility for divers. It is true that human divers operating in zero-visibility water face significant safety risks. A diver who cannot see cannot navigate safely, cannot identify hazards, and cannot reliably locate or attach salvage equipment. Dive operations in the murky coastal waters off the Essequibo are genuinely challenging for human divers. We acknowledge that.
But the government’s argument conflates diver visibility with operational capability, as though the only way to work on a submerged vessel is to send a person into the water with a mask on. That has not been the standard approach in professional marine salvage for decades. The standard approach is the Remotely Operated Vehicle, the ROV.
An ROV is a tethered underwater robot controlled from the surface by a pilot who watches a live feed and operates the vehicle’s thrusters, cameras, and manipulator arms via a control system. The ROV does not breathe. It does not need to see with human eyes. It is equipped with sonar systems that provide navigation and object detection in zero visibility. It can be deployed to the wreck site, navigate to specific structural points using acoustic positioning, attach lifting equipment, inspect internal compartments, and perform complex mechanical tasks, all without a human being in the water.
How ROVs Operate in Zero Visibility
When deployed in murky water, an ROV pilot on the surface navigates using the sonar’s heads-up display rather than a camera feed. This is precisely analogous to how a commercial pilot flies through thick cloud or fog using instrument readings rather than visual reference. The ROV’s position is tracked in real time using Ultra-Short Baseline acoustic positioning systems, which provide continuous three-dimensional location data accurate to within centimetres. The ROV holds its position against current using its dynamic vectored thruster system. None of this requires the water to be clear. None of it requires a diver.
Work-Class ROVs for Salvage Operations
Professional salvage companies deploy what the industry calls work-class ROVs for complex recovery operations. These vehicles are substantially larger and more powerful than the inspection-class ROVs used for survey work. The SMD Quasar, for example, is rated to 6,000 metres depth, is equipped with an automated dynamic positioning system including sonar lock, and can perform demanding construction and salvage work. The Saab Seaeye range, used extensively in oil and gas and salvage operations, combines powerful thrusters with full sonar integration and manipulator arms capable of handling heavy industrial equipment. Vessels like the R/V Hercules deploy these systems routinely from dynamically positioned support ships in exactly the conditions present off the Essequibo Coast.
It bears emphasis that the French Armed Forces divers, the Brazilian Navy, and the Trinidadian specialist teams that were already deployed to the Barima site used exactly the same principle: sending trained professionals with equipment into zero-visibility water to perform specific tasks. The difference between what they did and what a professional salvage ROV would do is that the ROV does not need to surface for air, does not face the physical danger of disorientation in zero visibility, can work continuously for hours without fatigue, and can be recalled and redeployed instantly if conditions change.
Furthermore, the government’s own actions confirm that underwater work at the site is possible. The 1,500-tonne buoyancy airbags that were deployed to the Barima wreck had to be attached to the vessel by teams working in the same murky, low-visibility water the government is now citing as an obstacle. If the water was too murky for salvage, it was too murky to attach those airbags. The two positions cannot both be true.
The Current Problem: Dynamic Positioning Was Designed for Exactly This
The third element of the government’s argument is that strong currents make salvage operations at the site unsafe or impractical. Currents are a real factor in marine operations. The Atlantic coast of Guyana experiences tidal and ocean currents that are not trivial. This is a legitimate operational consideration.
It is also a consideration that marine salvage and offshore industry addressed comprehensively decades ago, through a system called Dynamic Positioning.
Dynamic Positioning Systems
A Dynamic Positioning system, known in the industry as DP, allows a surface vessel to maintain an exact position relative to the seafloor using nothing but its own thrusters and propellers. The DP system continuously receives data from GPS, acoustic positioning systems, and motion sensors, and automatically adjusts thruster output to counteract the force of wind, waves, and current. The vessel does not move from its position regardless of the current acting on it. This technology is standard on every professional marine salvage vessel in the world and is used routinely in conditions far more severe than those present off the Essequibo Coast.
ROV Dynamic Positioning in Current
Modern work-class ROVs are themselves equipped with dynamic positioning systems that allow them to hold their position precisely against the current acting on them underwater. The ROV’s thrusters counteract the force of the current, allowing it to remain stationary at a specific point on the wreck for as long as the task requires. Professional ROVs used in salvage operations can maintain position in currents that would be physically impossible for a human diver to work in. The SRV-8 professional ROV, for instance, is explicitly designed for high stability and precise manoeuvrability in challenging ocean currents. The SMD Quasar includes sonar lock capability, which allows the ROV to lock its position relative to a specific point on a submerged structure and hold that position automatically as conditions change.
To summarise: the current off the Essequibo Coast affects the surface salvage vessel, which is managed by the ship’s Dynamic Positioning system. It affects the ROV underwater, which is managed by the ROV’s own thruster-based positioning system. Neither of these is an insurmountable obstacle. Both of them are standard operating conditions in marine salvage work in coastal, river-fed, and offshore environments around the world. The Amazon mouth, the Niger Delta, the Mekong estuary, the Mississippi delta: all of these environments are current-affected and turbid. All of them have been the site of successful salvage operations using exactly the technology described in this article.
What This Technology Costs and Who Has It
A government with 60 billion US dollars in committed oil investment might be expected to have access to the technology described above. The relevant question for the public is whether Guyana would need to spend significant resources to bring this capability to the wreck site, or whether the cost is manageable relative to the obligation at hand.
The answer is that none of this technology is exotic or prohibitively expensive for a nation of Guyana’s current resource position. Resolve Marine Group, headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, maintains staged equipment and personnel in the Americas and can mobilise rapidly to Caribbean and South American coastal operations. SMIT Salvage, a subsidiary of the Dutch company Boskalis, deploys sonar-equipped ROV systems with dynamic positioning support vessels as a standard package for coastal and shallow-water salvage operations. Ardent Global maintains integrated salvage capability across the Atlantic basin.
A full salvage mobilisation for a 500-tonne coastal vessel in shallow to mid-depth water, including sonar survey, ROV operations, lift equipment, and dynamic positioning support, costs between two million and ten million US dollars at industry-standard rates. Against the backdrop of a government that funds stadiums, airports, and a 200 million dollar Development Bank from oil revenues, this is not a financial constraint. It is a budgetary line item.
The barriers to raising the MV Barima are not technological. They are not financial. They are not environmental. The barriers, if there are any, are ones of political will. And that is a conversation the government of Guyana owes the nation.
The Contradiction in the Government’s Position
There is a fundamental contradiction in what the government has said about conditions at the Barima wreck site, and it deserves to be stated plainly.
The government deployed 1,500-tonne buoyancy airbags to the wreck. These airbags had to be physically attached to specific points on the submerged hull by teams operating in the same murky, current-affected, low-visibility water the government says makes salvage impossible. That operation required navigating to the wreck, identifying attachment points, and securing industrial-scale equipment to the hull, all in the conditions now being cited as prohibitive.
If those conditions permitted the attachment of buoyancy airbags, they permit ROV-assisted salvage preparation. The two operations are comparable in complexity. The technology required to do one is the same technology required to do the other. The government cannot credibly argue both that its teams successfully attached airbags to the wreck in murky, current-affected water and that murky, current-affected water prevents salvage.
The other contradiction concerns the divers who have entered the vessel and recovered bodies from within it. Those divers worked in the same conditions. If human divers, working with considerably more physical limitation than ROV systems, have successfully entered the vessel in zero-visibility turbid water, then the assertion that conditions prevent professional salvage equipment from doing so is not supported by the government’s own reported operations.
What Guyana1News Is Calling For
We are not calling for reckless haste that endangers additional lives. We are calling for a technically competent, professionally resourced response commensurate with the gravity of what has happened and the resources of the nation that is responsible for responding to it.
- The government must engage at least one internationally certified marine salvage company, namely Resolve Marine Group, SMIT Salvage, or Ardent Global, to conduct a formal assessment of the Barima wreck site. That assessment should include a side-scan sonar survey, an ROV inspection, and a written salvage plan with a realistic timeline. The assessment and the plan should be made public.
- The government must stop characterising full salvage as a last resort. The language signals to the families of the missing that their loved ones are a lower priority than the cost and disruption of salvage operations. That is not an acceptable signal from a government with Guyana’s current resource capacity.
- The Commission of Inquiry must be given access to the raised vessel as part of its terms of reference. The physical evidence of what happened on July 18 is on the seabed. It deteriorates with every passing day. An investigation that does not examine the primary evidence is not a complete investigation.
- The government must explain publicly why the murky water argument is being advanced in a context where its own dive teams have already demonstrated the ability to work in those conditions. The public deserves a technically coherent explanation, not a general reference to difficult conditions.
The Standard the Families Deserve
Thirty people went to sea on a government vessel under government regulatory oversight and did not come home. Their families are not asking for miracles. They are asking for the standard of response that the technology of 2026 makes possible, and that the resources of 2026 Guyana make affordable.
Murky water did not stop dive teams from entering the vessel and recovering bodies. Murky water did not stop teams from attaching buoyancy airbags to the hull. Murky water did not stop the French, Brazilian, and Trinidadian personnel who responded to this disaster from operating at the site.
Murky water will not stop Resolve Marine, or SMIT Salvage, or Ardent Global from doing what they have done in waters exactly like this, on every continent, for decades.
What stops them from being here is the absence of a phone call. And what the government owes the families of the thirty still missing is a very simple, very direct explanation of why that call has not been made.
Raise the Barima.
Bring them home.
Source: Guyana1news
