It's been more than a year since the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef off the shore of Isola del Giglio, in the Mediterranean, leading to a wreck that cost 30 passengers their lives.
Yet the enormous ship is still sitting off the Italian coast, mostly submerged, in the middle of a nationally protected marine park and coral reef.
The ingenious salvage operation—called the "Parbuckling Project"— involves building a series of underwater platforms onto which the Costa Concordia will be lifted upright (parbuckled), then floated up and towed away.
It is now fully underway: The underwater platform has been partly installed, and more than a third of the flotation devices that will hopefully lift the ship out of the sea have been filled and put in position.
These photos reveal how the salvage operation — the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive ever undertaken — is going so far.
The salvage operation is expected to cost $400 million (insurance companies are footing the bill). The ship should be floated upright next summer.
Work on the operation goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It's a race against the clock: The ship is currently held in place by steel cables, but it could be dislodged by a strong storm. If it sinks, salvaging it would be nearly impossible.
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