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

December 14, 2004, 2:00 pm AT: This update combines yesterday's and some of today's flight and shipboard observations. 3 cormorants, 1 harlequin, and 1 murrelet were picked up by helicopter salvo crew yesterday. 4 birds and 1 otter carcass were picked up dead by the wildlife crew on the Redeemer in Skan Bay. The ships are currently at the head of the southern arm of Skan Bay, awaiting better weather. Today's Incident Action Plan at contains an updated oil map. Photographs of beaches in Humpback Bay and the north shore of Portage Bay have been posted. Satellite communications with the ships are difficult, but we have learned that the 3 live birds were a long-tailed duck, common murre, and harlequin duck. The harlequin subsequently died. A weather front is predicted to bring 40 knot winds gusting to 50 by afternoon, seas building to 14-18 feet. Flying conditions were excellent yesterday and fair earlier today, but are deteriorating. Sunrise was at 10:19 am. Wednesday morning northeast gales are predicted, but coming down to 25 knots by afternoon.

Floating soy about the size of small ping-pong balls was visible 2 miles SW and coming directly from the wrecked Selendang Ayu. The ship's stern is riding low. About every 5th wave came over the decks, and on this flight the seas were observed to be down from the previous day. The front part of the bow section is still riding up, apparently having some buoyancy. There was a new heap of soy seen this afternoon, on the beach inside Skan Bay.

There was skim or broken ice at the heads of all smaller coves except Skan Bay, and ponds near berms are frozen. Far fewer waterfowl, especially puddle ducks, were seen on the back bays and berm areas due to ice. Seaducks and waterfowl are no longer in the frozen coves, but seabirds remain near Peter Island, near the more open Makushin Bay. A new oil mass was observed last night, and new sheens were observed south of Volcano Point, some of it going into Portage and Cannery Bays but not Anderson Bay. No sheens have been seen north of Volcano Point. Over 600 lbs of instrumentation was placed by crews on Volcano Pt (transported by helo) to help the on-site meteorologist. The instruments have yielded telemetry already, but must be calibrated. They should be functional soon.

Today's flight was rougher as weather deteriorated. Strong downdrafts in Anderson Bay, and wind conditions in the other bays prevented observations closer than 800 feet over shorelines. Shoreline oiling not seen before was observed on Skan Point. Preliminary anecdotal observations from biologists aboard the Cape Flattery report that 15 sea otters were seen tucked away into rocks and crevices at the back of Anderson Bay, and 2 in Skan Bay. None appeared to be oiled. Biologists also observed that several hundred oiled to lightly oiled birds have been seen, but neither the exact locations, species, nor ratio of living to dead birds is known at this time. About 30 oiled birds were seen at the head of Skan Bay, including: pelagic cormorant, double-crested cormorant, long-tailed duck, harlequin duck, pigeon guillemot, horned grebe, red-necked grebe, common murre, and one crested auklet that was behaving strangely as if it was oiled. But because there is so little oil on the water in this area, the birds may be picking oil up elsewhere before flying in to take shelter, and the weather is again preventing crews from seeing how many other birds may be oiled. Three landings were made and photographs and more water samples taken; no further information is available on the samples.