U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Response to Vessel Grounding/Oil Spill off Unalaska Island

December 13, 2004, 4:00 PM AT: Check the latest updated Incident Action Plan and Situation Report. Check the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's web site for previous updates and wildlife-related information.

Significant progress was made Sunday. Booms have been deployed in Makushin Bay's Portage and Cannery Bays and Naginak Cove, and booming work continues in the current fair weather window. Areas being boomed currently include freshwater stream mouths in Volcano Bay, on the north side of Makushin Bay. These streams connect nearby freshwater lakes to the ocean. Besides these, the most environmentally sensitive areas appear to be Anderson Bay because of large concentrations of birds, and salmon spawning streams in various other locations. The calmer, colder conditions and the presence of ice at the heads of the smaller bays has caused some of the waterfowl concentrations to move elsewhere, but it is not yet known where these birds went. Seabirds remain active in the opening of Anderson Bay near Peter Island. Oil is visible in the leads between broken ice.

Overflights were conducted yesterday and today; photos from yesterday can be found on the web. Today's photos will be uploaded as soon as possible. Biologists flew the entire coastline of Makushin Bay and noted locations and types of oil seen in the area. A map of these sightings can be found approximately two-thirds of the way through the Incident Action Plan. Future maps will be incorporated into daily Incident Action Plans as needed.

Today, biologists were able to land and take water samples at Portage Bay and one arm of Skan Bay. No further information is available on the water samples at this time. They saw sea lions still in the Spray Cape area, and a few harbor seals in Makushin Bay. Incidental observations from one of the helicopter crew earlier reported seeing 3 oiled cormorants, 1 oiled harlequin duck and 1 oiled alcid in the vicinity of the downed helicopter fuselage.

The vessel Cape Flattery, with two Service biologists and two wildlife rescue experts aboard, is on-site near Skan Bay. The vessel Exito is being equipped and readied in Dutch Harbor, for the purpose of wildlife surveys and recovery. The vessels Joshua and Redeemer remain on-site and continue to place booms.

A meteorologist is working on installation of a weather station onshore, and there is a spare weather buoy at Kodiak that may be transported to the area. These will be able to provide instantaneous weather observations online.