A 98-foot fishing boat ran aground in the Eastern Aleutians on June 17 will be scuttled.
Four people were on board the F/V Pacific Sounder when it got stuck along the western shore of Unimak Island, between Unalaska and the Alaska Peninsula.
The Pacific Sounder hailed a mayday call at 10:43 Friday morning, but the crew waited three hours before they were rescued. Eventually a good Samaritan boat, the Polar Sea, arrived and found the crew unharmed.
“They were still on the boat when they ran aground,” said Nate Littlejohn, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard. “By the time the Polar Sea arrived on scene, they were wearing their survival suits.”
Littlejohn says the boat owner has hired Resolve Marine, a salvage and wreck removal company out of Dutch Harbor, to recover the boat. The first thing they will do is make sure the diesel on board doesn’t spill into the ocean. And there’s a lot of it: 21,000 gallons, to be exact.
“We sent out a Coast Guard helicopter crew Saturday who did not observe any pollution,” Littlejohn said. “That’s not to say there hasn’t been any diesel that has escaped, but we don’t know of any at this time.”
Resolve said the Pacific Sounder is too stuck for them to be able to tow it. Instead, they’ll have to scuttle it. In other words, they’ll sink it, and Littlejohn said he doesn’t know how long that will take.
“It cannot be understated how complex this operation is,” Littlejohn said, “and to make a prediction about how long it’s going to take is just not a good idea. It’s just very unpredictable how long it’ll take based on the weather.”
No reason has been given for what caused the boat to run aground. The Coast Guard is investigating.
