We had fantasized for years about getting aboard, but it always seemed too difficult and other sites presented fewer challenges. PlanningДЄs news began to mount that the ships would finally be towed out for scrapping, we knew we had to act fast if we wanted to explore and document them. However, after Barack Obama took the Oval Office in 2008, the tide shifted and MARAD began working diligently to clean up and remove the ships. Lawsuits filed by environmental groups were also unsuccessful in forcing MARAD to remove the ships. Even though Congress and the State of California ordered MARAD to address the situation, nothing was done for most of the past decade.

The ships have shed more than 20 tons of toxic paint debris that have settled into bay sediments, where they will cause problems long after the ships are gone. Vallejo is currently in a heated battle with the port of Los Angeles (San Pedro) to secure rights to the battleship and turn it into a museum. But the Iowa will likely see a different fate than its sister ships who await their ultimate demise at a shipbreaker. Instead, they have sat unused and largely forgotten. Retired war ships like the Iowa were laid up in Suisun Bay for decades awaiting their next battle, but the call never came. Many ships in the fleet served in World War II, including the historic USS Iowa, the last remaining U.S. Although the ships continued to dwindle down over time, approximately 75 remained throughout the 2000s, rusting and leaching toxic heavy metals into the bay as the Bush administration did little to address the crumbling ships. The mothballed ships once numbered close to 400, and in 1959, 324 vessels still lined the waters of Suisun Bay. Perhaps a few ships are actually вЂњreserve readyвЂќ and could be activated, but the vast majority are well beyond their useful lives and rotting away as they wait in line for disposal. Maritime Administration (MARAD), were supposed to be ready for duty in the event of a national emergency. These ghost ships, part of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) overseen by the U.S. Of course, things did not always go as planned, but despite several close calls, we were successful in all of our attempts to infiltrate the ships while evading round-the-clock security patrols. Sneaking on-board required months of planning and coordination, and it involved taking significant risks. Over a two-year period, several close friends and I gained unprecedented access to the decaying ships, spending several days at a time photographing, documenting, and even sleeping aboard them-often in the luxury of the captainвЂ™s quarters. About 15 retired ships are already gone by 2017, the entire fleet will be just a memory. After a decade of impasse, the ghost fleet is slowly dwindling as the ships are towed out one-by-one for scrapping. These historic vessels-the Mothball Fleet-served their country in four wars: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm. For decades, dozens of forgotten Navy and merchant ships have been corroding in Suisun Bay, 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Metal gear rising ost: rules of nature