Source control has been contained for the fishing vessel that sunk in Women’s Bay, Kodiak in 1989. Leaking fuel was spotted on August 5 when Alaska Department of Fish and Game did a flyover and discovered a large sheen, which appeared to come from the bottom of the ocean.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reports that source control was achieved on September 16. Dive crews that discovered the source of the leak installed wooden damage control plugs into the pinholes left by the eroded rivet heads. The seals of the rivets reduced the fuel discharge from the vessel’s hull and defueling started on August 16.
Anna Carey, State On-Scene Coordinator for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation told KSRM:
“This is the final situation report, it was encouraging that the dive teams that were hired were able to access all of the voids and remove oil in any of the voids on the vessel. As the situation report said, they ended up removing 11,955 gallons of oily water. We definitely consider that a success.”
In addition, there were 606 bags of oiled absorbents that were recovered and wildlife observations conducted by the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge ceased with no impacts to wildlife or shoreline.
Carey was asked how often oil leaks from sunken vessels from years past:
“It does from time to time. It’s not super common. We, nowadays, try to get the oil off the vessel as soon it sinks or mitigate that in some other way so that it doesn’t sit down there for years.”
A boom remains in place to collect any residual oil that may escape from the vessel and will continue to be monitored for the presence of sheen. It will be removed once it’s determined the vessel is no longer releasing recoverable product to the surface.