Raise the MV Barima. Now.
Thirty people are still missing. They are not lost at sea. We know exactly where they are. The MV Barima is resting on its starboard side on the seabed, nine miles off the Essequibo Coast. It has been there for nine days. And right now, the technology, the expertise, and the financial resources to raise that vessel and bring every single person home exist, are available, and can be in Guyanese waters within days of a phone call.
So the question is not whether the MV Barima can be raised. The question is why it has not been raised yet. And the answer to that question matters far beyond the grief of thirty families waiting on a coastline for news that has not come.
Where the Barima Is and What We Know
The facts are not in dispute. The MV Barima capsized at approximately 11:01 p.m. on July 18, 2026, after being struck by a large wave off the North Atlantic coast near the mouth of the Pomeroon River, roughly seven to nine miles offshore. The vessel is resting on its starboard side on the seabed. French Armed Forces divers, Brazilian Navy assets, and Trinidadian specialist teams have all assessed the wreck. Dive teams have entered the vessel and recovered bodies from within it.
Prime Minister Mark Phillips confirmed that the aim is to have the vessel repositioned on its keel and moved to shallower water where divers can safely access the interior. President Ali said the government would consider full salvage as a last resort if other recovery efforts fail. One thousand five hundred-tonne buoyancy airbags have been deployed. The vessel has been partially repositioned.
But nine days in, thirty people remain unaccounted for. The vessel remains on the seabed. And the government is still describing full salvage as a last resort rather than an immediate imperative.
A last resort is what you call an option you do not want to use. When thirty Guyanese are still missing inside a sunken vessel, there is no such thing as a last resort. There is only what needs to be done.
The Technology Exists. The Companies Are Ready. The Call Has Not Been Made.
Let us be direct about what the international marine salvage industry is capable of, because the public deserves to understand that the obstacles here are not technical. They are political.
The global marine salvage services market is valued at 2.8 billion US dollars and is supported by some of the most technically sophisticated companies on earth. Resolve Marine Group, founded in 1984 and headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is the largest United States-based salvage company, with equipment and personnel staged in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. They specialise in emergency response and wreck removal in exactly the kinds of shallow to mid-depth coastal conditions the Barima presents. They have worked across the Caribbean and can mobilise rapidly.
SMIT Salvage, a subsidiary of Dutch giant Boskalis, has been in continuous operation since 1842 and deploys state-of-the-art equipment for vessel recovery and offshore operations worldwide. Mammoet Salvage specialises in mega-lift operations and extreme-complexity casualty interventions. Ardent Global, formed from the merger of Svitzer Salvage and Titan Salvage, maintains integrated salvage capabilities with annual revenues exceeding one hundred million dollars and has handled some of the most complex wreck removals in recent maritime history.
These companies do not need to be convinced that raising a vessel is possible. They do it for a living. Resolve Marine describes its approach plainly: when something extraordinary happens at sea, Resolve Marine responds. The Barima is extraordinary. The call just needs to be made.
It is worth remembering what Titan Salvage and Micoperi accomplished with the Costa Concordia: a 114,500-tonne cruise liner, the largest salvage operation in maritime history, successfully raised and refloated from the floor of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The MV Barima weighs approximately 500 tonnes. The comparison is not flattering to the argument that this vessel cannot be raised.
The Costa Concordia Precedent: Scale Is Not the Issue
The Costa Concordia sank off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people. She was a 114,500-tonne cruise liner, more than 290 metres long, lying on her side in approximately 20 metres of water. The Italian government, the ship’s owners, and a consortium of international salvage companies spent two and a half years raising her in an operation that ultimately cost 1.5 billion euros. Two victims remained unaccounted for when the salvage operation began. The last body was recovered from the wreck in November 2014, two years after the sinking.
The lesson of the Costa Concordia is not about the money. It is not about the technology. It is about the decision. Italy decided that raising the vessel was necessary, both to recover the missing and to remove an environmental hazard from a protected marine sanctuary. They made the call. They contracted the companies. They raised the ship.
The MV Barima is a 500-tonne coastal ferry resting nine miles off the Essequibo Coast in relatively shallow Atlantic waters. She is not a 114,500-tonne superliner buried under 3,000 metres of ocean. She is, by any measure of marine salvage complexity, a straightforward recovery operation for a company like Resolve Marine, SMIT Salvage, or Ardent Global. The technical challenge here is not extraordinary. The decision to make the call has simply not been taken.
Money Is No Limit. Guyana Need Only Ask.
This government has found 60 billion US dollars in committed oil investment. It has funded a new highway, a new bridge, new stadiums, new airports, and a Development Bank capitalised at 200 million US dollars. It has declared, repeatedly and publicly, that Guyana’s oil wealth means the era of resource constraints is over.
A full marine salvage operation for a vessel the size of the MV Barima would cost, at industry-standard rates, somewhere between two million and ten million US dollars depending on the complexity of the lift, the equipment mobilisation costs, and the duration of the operation. That is a fraction of a fraction of what this government spends on infrastructure in a single month. It is, by any reasonable standard of what this nation owes its dead, a trivial sum.
If the government chooses not to fund it directly, there is a second path available. Private international marine salvage companies operate on commercial terms and can be contracted without a single dollar of public funds. There are also international humanitarian and maritime organisations that support vessel recovery operations in developing nations. Guyana is a member of the International Maritime Organization. The mechanisms are there.
Guyana need only ask. A phone call to Fort Lauderdale, to Rotterdam, to London. The companies that do this work are not waiting for an invitation from a government that has the resources. They are waiting for the call.
What the Vessel Holds Beyond Bodies
There is a dimension to this salvage question that goes beyond the immediate grief of recovery, and it must be stated plainly: the MV Barima is also evidence.
The Commission of Inquiry that President Ali has appointed will need to examine the vessel. It will need to determine how cargo was loaded and distributed, because the MARAD Director General admitted publicly that he had no record of how weight was distributed above and below deck. It will need to examine the condition of the hull, the integrity of the watertight compartments, and the state of the vessel’s safety equipment at the time of sinking. It will need to assess the physical evidence of what happened in the vessel’s final hours.
That evidence is on the seabed nine miles off the Essequibo Coast. Every day it sits there, currents shift the wreck, internal structures settle and collapse, and physical evidence deteriorates. The vessel that investigators will need to examine in six months is not the same vessel that can be examined today. Time is destroying evidence at the same rate it is exhausting the families of the missing.
Raising the Barima is not just a humanitarian obligation. It is a forensic necessity. You cannot conduct a credible investigation into the causes of a maritime disaster from a press conference on the shore while the primary evidence lies uncovered on the ocean floor.
The Question Behind the Question
When a government describes the recovery of a vessel containing its own dead as a last resort, and when a government has the resources to contract some of the world’s leading salvage companies within days but has not done so, the question that every Guyanese has a right to ask is simple and direct: what is there to hide?
We are not suggesting an answer to that question. We are insisting that the question be asked. Because the pattern of decision-making since July 18 has been troubling. A manifest that undercounted passengers by 46 people. A captain and first engineer who tested positive for narcotics. A MARAD Director General who did not know how cargo was distributed. A Commission of Inquiry whose chairman has a prior relationship with the appointing government. And now a salvage decision that is being delayed, qualified, and described as a last resort rather than an urgent necessity.
Each of these decisions, taken individually, might be explained away. Taken together, they form a pattern that demands scrutiny. And the most powerful form of scrutiny available to the families of the missing, to the opposition, and to the Guyanese public is the raised vessel itself: sitting on a dock, accessible to investigators, its cargo distribution visible, its hull condition documented, its internal structure available for forensic examination.
The government that is most confident in its own innocence should want the Barima raised more than anyone. A vessel on the surface speaks. A vessel on the seabed is silent. And silence, in the aftermath of the worst maritime disaster in Guyanese history, is not acceptable.
What Needs to Happen Now
Guyana1News calls for the following actions, immediately.
1. Contact at least three international marine salvage companies within 48 hours.
Resolve Marine Group, SMIT Salvage, and Ardent Global are all capable of mobilising to Guyana within days. The government should initiate contact, obtain formal assessments, and publish the results. The public deserves to know what has been done and what the realistic timeline for a full salvage operation is.
2. Reframe full salvage as a primary objective, not a last resort.
The language used by President Ali and Prime Minister Phillips around salvage as a last resort must change. It signals to the families of the missing that recovering their loved ones is contingent on the failure of cheaper, less disruptive alternatives. That is not an acceptable position for a government with the resources Guyana possesses.
3. Give the Commission of Inquiry access to the raised vessel as part of its terms of reference.
The terms of reference published by President Ali make no mention of physical examination of the raised vessel. This must be corrected. Any investigation that does not physically examine the primary evidence is not a complete investigation.
4. Explore international salvage funding mechanisms openly and publicly.
If the government wishes to demonstrate that this is not a matter of political will but of process, it should formally request IMO support for a vessel recovery operation and make that communication public. Transparency is not weakness. In this case, it is the only currency that has value.
A Final Word
Thirty people went to sea on July 18, 2026, on a government vessel, on a government route, under government regulatory oversight. They have not come home. Their families know where they are. The technology to bring them home exists. The money to bring them home exists. The companies willing to do the work exist.
The only thing standing between thirty Guyanese and a proper burial is a decision. A phone call to the right company. A government willing to say, plainly and without qualification: we are going to raise that vessel because the people inside it deserve to come home, and because the truth of what happened that night deserves to come up with them.
Raise the Barima.
Bring them home.
Source: Guyana1news
