Oil Spill Update: Is this the Path of the Cosco Busan?
BoatingSF.com has posted an animated video created by using Automatic Identification System (AIS) radio signals.
Check out the video here.
Nobody, not us and not even BoatingSF, is vouching that the path indicated is 100% accurate, so please keep that in mind.
In fact, we have a little bone to pick with the video ourselves. See that after the jump.
Here is the text as it appeared Sunday morning. The phrase "center tower of the bridge" suggests that there are only three towers of the suspension portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Having said that, it appears that the dot representing the tower with the damaged fender is correctly located.
"Path of the Cosco Busan Hitting the Bay Bridge
The animation below shows the Cosco Busan as it leaves the Port of Oakland on November 7, 2007, and hits the Bay Bridge at 8:30 am on its way to the Golden Gate.
The Cosco Busan is the bright red arrow. (Hover over a ship to see its information.)
You can see that the ship was traveling at an acute angle to the bridge and then turned sharply, directly into the center tower of the bridge. (The towers are highlighted with red dots to make them more visible.)
No cleanup ships show up in our AIS records. It is not clear whether they arrived later, did not have their AIS transponders on, or if for some reason our receiver did not detect their signals. (Coast Guard ships generally do not turn on their AIS transponders, so they do not show up.)
Disclaimer: This information was received by our AIS receiver in Tiburon and the signal was processed by our custom software. We make no representation as to its accuracy. Positions are approximate. We do not have time stamps for this track."