A unique six-month operation to raise a submersible laboratory from the bed of the Tsemes Bay in the Black Sea has been completed in the southern Russian city of Novorossiisk, the Rossiya 24 television network reported on Wednesday.
The lab, which sunk some 20 years ago, was cut into four parts to make the lifting process easier for divers. It prevented builders from constructing a base for Russian Black Sea Fleet naval vessels on the site.
About a dozen attempts have been made during these years to lift the submersible, built for scientific research, but all of them have failed.
Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported that tractor trucks and crane ships had been used to raise the lab, whose nose, according to the government daily, weighed 180 metric tons.
There are conflicting reports about when the laboratory was built - in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
