Attention is now turning to how to remove more than 2,300 tons of fuel aboard the vessel, which lies

The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said Friday as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers.
CEO Pierluigi Foschi told Italian state TV that the company spoke to the captain at 10:05 p.m. , some 20 minutes after the ship ran aground on Jan. 13, but could not offer proper assistance because the captain's description "did not correspond to the truth," Reuters reported.
Passenger video shown on Italian TV indicates crew members telling passengers to go to their cabins as late as 10:25 p.m. (2125 GMT; 4:25 p.m. EST). The abandon ship alarm sounded just before 11 p.m. (2200 GMT; 5:25 p.m. EST).
Sensors installed Thursday show constant vibrations in the ship structure, NBC News has learned. The ship is resting on two points underwater, keeping it from sinking. The remainder of the vessel is hanging and moves. Officials are worried the Concordia will sink further or suffer a sudden drop.
Firefighters' spokesman Luca Cari said rescue squads would be discussing the next step after the movement made conditions unsafe for divers already hampered by poor visibility, floating objects and underwater debris.
Seven days after the ship ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast, hopes of finding anyone alive have all but disappeared and the cold waters around the ship have become rougher, with worse weather expected at the weekend.
Attention is now turning to how to remove more than 2,300 tons of fuel aboard the vessel, which lies on its side on a rock shelf in about 20 meters of water off the little island of Giglio and which could slide off its resting place.
Salvage crews are waiting until the search for survivors and bodies is called off before they can begin pumping student discount airline tickets the half-million gallons of fuel out of the wreck, a process expected to take at least two weeks.
Worries in paradise The fuel is in danger of leaking student discount airline tickets out and polluting some of the Mediterranean's most unspoiled sea, where dolphins are known to chase playfully after sailboats and fishermen's catches are so prized that wholesalers come from across Italy to scoop up cod, lobsters, student discount airline tickets scampi, swordfish and other delicacies.
Concordia lies dangerously close to a drop-off point on the sea bottom. Should strong waves nudge the vessel from its precarious perch, it could plunge some 20-30 meters (65-90 feet), further complicating the pumping operation and possibly rupturing fuel tanks. Italy's environment minister has warned that if those tanks break, globs of fuel would block sunlight vital for marine life at the seabed.
A week after the Concordia struck a reef off the fishing and tourism island of Giglio, flipping student discount airline tickets on its side, its crippled 114,000-ton hull rests on seabed student discount airline tickets rich with an underwater prairie student discount airline tickets of sea grass vital to the ecosystem. The dead weight has likely student discount airline tickets already damaged a variety of marine life, including endangered sea sponges, and crustaceans and mollusks, student discount airline tickets even before a drop of any fuel leaks, environmentalists contend.
"The longer it stays there, the longer it impedes light from reaching the vegetation," said Francesco Cinelli, an ecology professor at the University of Pisa, in Tuscany. And the sheer weight of the Concordia will also crush sea life, he said.
They include Elba, where Napoleon lived in exile, and the legendary island of Montecristo, a setting for Alexandre Dumas' novel "The Count of Monte Cristo" where rare Mediterranean monk seals have been spotted near the coast.
Montecristo has a two-year waiting list of people hoping to be among the 1,000 people student discount airline tickets annually escorted ashore by forest rangers to admire the uninhabited island. Navigation, bathing and fishing are strictly prohibited up to 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from Montecristo's rocky, cove-dotted coast. A monastery, established on Montecristo in the 7th century, was abandoned nine centuries later after repeated pirate raids.
Come spring, Porto Ercole's slips will be full, with yachts dropping anchor just outside the port. It lies at the bottom of a steep hill, whose summit gives a panoramic view of a sprawling seaside villa, once a holiday retreat of Dutch royals, and of the crescent-shaped island of Giannutri, with its ancient Roman ruins.
Alberto Teodori, 49, who said he has been hired as a skipper for the yachts of Rome's VIPs for 30 years, noted that the area thrives student discount airline tickets on tourism in the spring and summer and survives on fishing in the offseason.
Questions about safety Late Thursday, Costa-owner Carnival Corp. announced it was conducting a comprehensive audit of all 10 of its cruise lines to review safety and emergency response student discount airline tickets procedures in the wake of the Costa disaster. The evacuation was chaotic and the alarm to abandon the ship was sounded after the Concordia had capsized too much to get many life boats down.
The owners of the doomed Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia were not aware of unsafe practices involving ships coming close to shore to give tourists a better view, Costa Cruises chief executive Pier Luigi Foschi told a newspaper on Friday.
Investigators say Schettino, student discount airline tickets the captain of the Costa Concordia, steered the ship too close to the Tuscan island of Giglio, where the 114,500 ton vessel ran aground and capsized last week, apparently while performing a maneuver known as a "salute" student discount airline tickets which took it within 150 metres of the shore.
Foschi told the Corriere della Sera that ships sometimes passed near to shore during what he termed "tourist navigation" but he said this was always performed safely and he denied that the company knew the Concordia would be going so close.
The company had approved a similar maneuver in August and Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading maritime publication, says its tracking showed that the ship's student discount airline tickets August route actually took the Concordia slightly closer to Giglio than the course that caused the grounding student discount airline tickets last week.
The $450 million student discount airline tickets Costa Concordia was carrying student discount airline tickets more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into well-marked rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio. The ship then keeled over on its side and is still half-submerged student discount airline tickets nearly a week later.
'He saved over 3,000 lives' Meanwhile, a young Moldovan woman who translated evacuation instructions from the bridge after the Costa Concordia ran into a reef emerged as a potential new witness in the investigation into the captain's actions on that fateful night.
Costa Concordia crew member Dominica Cemortan gestures in this still image from a Jan. 17 television interview. Cemortan defended the captain's actions, saying he helped to save the lives of passengers.
Italian media have said prosecutors want to interview 25-year-old Dominica student discount airline tickets Cermotan, who had worked for Costa as a hostess fluent in several languages but was not on duty when she boarded the ship Jan. 13 in the Italian student discount airline tickets port of Civitavecchia.
In interviews with Moldovan student discount airline tickets media and on her own Facebook page, Cermotan said she was called up to the bridge of the Concordia after it struck the reef to translate evacuation instructions for Russian passengers. She defended Schettino, who has been vilified in the Italian media for leaving his ship before everyone was evacuated safely.
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