JOHNS ISLAND — The S.C. Department of Natural Resources will soon remove the derelict Navy torpedo retriever from Bohicket Creek.

The 120-foot research vessel, called HAZAR, has been stuck in the marshy banks of the quiet creek for over four years. SCDNR announced that it will remove the vessel Aug. 19 alongside Stevens Towing, a Charleston-based marine transportation and salvage company.

HAZAR belonged to a man named Sam Kodaimati, who purchased it at a government auction in 2021. The ship arrived in South Carolina waters in July 2021. Kodaimati parked the ship next to a private dock near Johns Island.

SCDNR officers arrested Kodaimati on July 22 , charging him with two counts of abandoning a watercraft — the first test of the state’s harsher laws governing abandoned and derelict v

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