barge loaded with materials and nearly sinking

[steveop]

found this movie on the web, barge seems to overloaded on one side and nearly sinking, all happening in the Panama channel!

http://www.dredgemovies.com/dredge%20movies%20-%20video%201.html

[Mac Mackay]

This is a bottom dumping hopper barge. It has lots of buoyancy, and is not sinking.
It is being loaded from one end. You will see that the drede is dumping its bucket about midships, having started at the bow of the barge.
There is a fair amount of water from the dredge bucket that goes into the barge. Once there is enough rock in the barge to displace the water, and the barge is fully loaded, it will return to a normal trim, but with very low freeboard.
It has side tanks that keep it afloat. When the bottom doors are opened and the rock is dumped out the barge will pop back up to unloaded draft.