Lawsuit filed in federal court near 3-year anniversary of shipwreck disaster

Sep. 9—Three years after the vessel Golden Ray capsized in the St. Simons Sound with a cargo of more than 4,000 vehicles, lifelong shrimper Johnny Ray Bennett says the shrimp harvest is not as bountiful as before.

However, the trawl nets of the Dora F have been finding one commodity all too plentiful: car parts.

"Oh, yeah, we're catching all that junk — bumpers, radiator hoses, tires," Bennett said Thursday. "It's everywhere you look, but we ain't catching the shrimp like we used to."

Bennett is among a group of commercial fishermen represented in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Brunswick against the owner of the Golden Ray and the company that salvaged the shipwreck, among others.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court a day before the three-year anniversary of the environmental disaster that would dominate activity in the sound for two years.

The Golden Ray overturned on its port side in the predawn hours of Sept. 8, 2019, while heading out to sea with a cargo of 4,161 vehicles and an estimated 380,000 gallons of fuel in its tanks. Fuel hemorrhaged in massive discharges from the half-submerged ship's fuel tank vents on two occasions in the weeks afterward. Numerous oil spills and a massive fire occurred during the subsequent salvage of the shipwreck by T&T Salvage. Hired in early 2020 by the ship's owners, GL NV24 Shipping Inc., T&T Salvage commenced the salvage operation in November 2020 and removed the last section of the shipwreck in late October 2021.

Attorneys Roy Boyd of Brunswick and Donald Stack of Atlanta filed the lawsuit on behalf of several dozen shrimpers, charter boat fishing guides and crabbers. The lawsuit claims that "willful misconduct, malice, fraud" and negligence on behalf of those named has caused environmental damage to the sound.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of local commercial fishermen like Bennett and Leslie Jacobs, as well as shrimpers from as far away as the Carolinas who fish locally.

GL NV24 Shipping owned the Golden Ray. It was charted by Hyundai Glovis of South Korea, which also is cited in the suit.

The lawsuit also names G. Marine Service Co., which staffed the Golden Ray's crew, and Norton Lilly International, identified as the ship's agent in the Port of Brunswick.

The lawsuit claims oil and other pollutants continue to degrade the water quality in and around the St. Simons Sound in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. Chemicals such as sulfuric acid, lithium and cobalt also have leached into the sediment of the sound's seabed, the lawsuit said.

"As a direct and proximate result of defendants' discharges of oil and other hazardous substances and their effects on the local environment, plaintiffs have suffered damages, including loss of profits and impairment of earning capacity due to the injury, destruction, or loss of personal property and natural resources," the lawsuit states.

Additionally, the lawsuit claims the seabed is littered with car parts from the hundreds of vehicles that slipped from the shipwreck during the salvage operation.

Following completion of the salvage operation, nearly 800 vehicles were plucked from inside the 1-mile-perimeter environmental protection barrier (EPB) that was built around the shipwreck.

Numerous vehicle bumpers, tires and other car parts have washed ashore around the sound since the shipwreck. The sunken cars presented still more water pollution threats from the various chemicals in each vehicle, including brake fluid, transmission fluid, motor oil and radiator coolants, the lawsuit asserts.

"These cars, car parts, materials, and debris present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the environment as they have changed the underwater topography of the sound while also releasing toxic pollutants which have impacted underwater ecology," the lawsuit states.

The ship's owner selected T&T Salvage in January 2020, choosing the Texas-based company over its contracted emergency salvor, Donjon-SMITT.

Crews pumped some 327,000 gallons of fuel from the overturned freighter's tanks in the final months of 2019.

Prior to commencing with the salvage operation, workers spent several months in 2020 constructing the EPB. The structure encompassed the shipwreck with sturdy mesh netting below and oil retention boom below. The EPB had limited success, with leaking oil flowing over and under the floating boom on the sound's swift tidal waters.

T&T began salvage operations Nov. 6, 2020, using the towering VB 10,000's system of pulleys and winches to tear up through sections of the shipwreck with massive cutting chains. The giant crane hoisted each section from the water and placed it on an awaiting barge for removal from the sound.

But the project experienced numerous setbacks and emergencies. The chain broke within 24 hours of the first cut, the first of many chain brakes during the operation. Cuts that were originally anticipated to last no more than a day or two stretched from eight days to six weeks each.

Oil leaks were frequent. The most significant occurred on Aug. 31, when vast sheets of thick, dark oil propelled by outgoing tides washed ashore on St. Simons Island's south end beaches.

The eighth and last remaining chunk of the Golden Ray was hauled from the sound on a barge on Oct. 25, 2021.

The Golden Ray's cargo of vehicles was loaded too high and the vessel lacked sufficient ballast below when it set out to sea from the Port of Brunswick after midnight on Sept. 8, 2019, a National Transportation and Safety Board investigation concluded last year. This made the ship top-heavy, causing it to capsize while going through a right turn in the shipping channel inside the St. Simons Sound, the NTSB concluded.

The NTSB also concluded the Golden Ray's first mate made a mistake in calculating the cargo's weight distribution, a calculation that is reached with a handheld electronic tool.

The lawsuit alleges fault by all defendants, from those overseeing the loading of the cargo at the port, the ship's crew and, ultimately, the companies that owned and chartered the vessel.

"Plaintiffs seek declaratory relief as well as an injunction ordering defendants to remediate the sound and surrounding waters and marshlands, pay civil penalties to the U.S. Treasury and reimburse plaintiffs for their attorneys' fees and expenses to litigate," the lawsuit said.

Like Bennett, longtime shrimper Jacobs says his catches are down.

"It's cut us way back on our production," Jacobs said. "And it's not only us. It's the charter fishermen too. A lot of your bottom (marine wildlife) stuff is dead. Shrimp, whiting. It's been off for a couple of years, but this year has been worse than last year."

Jacobs trawls the open waters off of Glynn County in the Liberty Bell and goes for bait shrimp inside the sound in a smaller boat that drags a 20-foot net. Large shrimp boats are not permitted to operate in inland waters.

Bennett, Jacobs and other commercial fisherman are taking all recovered car parts to attorney Boyd.

"I carried some parts over to him the day before yesterday," Jacobs said. "Another bumper. A while back I carried him a tire.

Bennett harvested 130 pounds of shrimp Wednesday, barely enough to cover expenses, he said. But in open waters far out from the sound, he recently pulled up "four fenders in one drag," he said.

"Before they started cutting that big boat up, we was doing good," Bennett said. "Once they started cutting it up, there ain't been near as many shrimp as they used to be. I don't know if they're scared or what. But it's damn sure put a hurt on us."

The salvage operation was supervised by Unified Command, which consisted of the U.S. Coast Guard, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and a private entity. Its stated role was to ensure the operation abided by environmental protection standards set forth by the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

Continuous testing in the sound throughout the salvage operation showed no signs of permanent water quality degradation, state DNR officials said. DNR biologists also reported no long-term damage to the fish, crab and shrimp populations.

The state Environmental Protection Division fined the Golden Ray's owner a record $3 million last year, citing the numerous releases of oil and debris that violated water quality standards.