When supermoon & high tide came to Ever Given’s rescue

For six days, billions of dollars worth of international commerce sat paralysed at the Suez Canal, thanks to a single giant container ship 'Ever Given', apparently knocked sideways by a powerful southerly wind.

The ship’s insurers and the canal authorities summoned the largest tugboats. They deployed diggers, front-end loaders and specialised dredgers.

But not until the seventh day, after the confluence of the full moon and the sun conjured an unusually high tide, did the ship wriggle free with one last heave shortly after 3 pm, allowing the first of the nearly 400 ships waiting to resume their journeys by Monday evening.

Salvage teams, working on land and water for six days and nights, were ultimately assisted by the moon and the tides.

With a full moon Sunday, the next 24 hours had offered the best window to work, with a few extra inches of tidal flow providing a vital assist for their efforts.

Read: Ever Given stuck in Suez Canal afloat, traffic resumes after almost a week

The partial freeing of the vessel had come after intensive efforts to push and pull the vessel with 10 tugboats when the full moon brought spring tide raising the canal's water level and hopes for a breakthrough, canal services firm Leth Agencies told AP.

The full moon and new moon come with higher tides which happen when the moon is aligned with the sun directly, with either the Earth or Moon in the middle of the three. This leads to an increase in Earth’s gravitational pull which subsequently results in higher or lower tides, a phenomenon known as spring tides.

What’s interesting is that the full moon that helped 'Ever Given' also happened to be 2021’s first supermoon, said a Wall Street Journal report.

The supermoon phenomenon occurs when the moon is within 10 per cent of its closest distance to the Earth at the full moon.

Read: Global reinsurers stare at massive losses from Suez Canal blockage: Fitch Ratings

By Sunday night, the supermoon had caused tidal levels to exceed 6½ feet, some 19 inches above the high tide compared to March 23 when the 'Ever Given' ran aground, The operation was aided by the arrival of a Dutch-flagged tugboat, the Alp Guard, with a pulling power of 285 metric tons, a major boost compared with the other tugboats working on the vessel, such as the Suez-based Baraka 1 that pulled at 160 tons, said the report.

Nick Sloane, a maritime salvage expert, told the publication that the few additional inches brought by the spring tides made a critical difference, adding thousands of tons of buoyancy to float the 'Ever Given'.

(With agency inputs)