World Photos by Susan Chambers The New Carissa, being gradually whittled away by salvage crews, lies in the sand next to the elevated barge Karlissa B.

Titan Salvage’s crew carted away the first slabs of steel sliced off the shipwreck of the New Carissa.

The ship chunks sailed off this week on a floating barge, which the crew hauled into Empire. The pieces will be processed and shipped to a recycling center.

Titan managing director David Parrot said the trip out with the barge was a little more than he bargained for. The forecast predicted 3-foot seas, but Titan crews met up with something that approached 6-foot seas.

“What we had ... was the first time the forecast was wrong in the wrong direction,” Parrot said.

The barge — weather allowing — will take three more trips out to pick up more of the New Carissa from the  jack up barges, the Karlissa A and Karlissa B, Parrot said.

Wednesday, Titan diver Billy Wehnes took a slice out of a portion of the New Carissa’s crane stuck in the sand near the stern. The crane piece was so mired in the sand that it resisted Titan’s attempts to pull it out. Wehnes and his torch took the plunge, and he cut the piece off 3 feet below the sand line. The ocean was so flat and calm that Wehnes didn’t even need the protection of “Billy’s Box,” the multi-ton container cut off the New Carissa to serve as a barrier against the surf.  The piece was about 12 feet long and weighed 6,000 pounds, Parrot said.