CalCoast News

Captain delayed calling in cleanup contractor

Governor bans fishing in Bay, on S.F. coast

By Mike Taugher and Paul Rogers
Oakland Tribune
November 14, 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took the unprecedented step Tuesday of banning fishing in San Francisco Bay and off portions of the Northern California coast until Dec. 1 because of last week's oil spill.

The decision will delay the local dungeness crab season past Thanksgiving and could end up delaying the start of the herring season, the only commercial fishery left in the Bay. State officials said it was the only time state fisheries have been closed due to an oil spill.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard's top official in California said Tuesday that the crew of the Cosco Busan did not notify the company responsible for dispatching cleanup crews until about an hour after the ship struck the Bay Bridge.

State law says the operator of any ship that spills oil must notify the Coast Guard, his cleanup contractor and California Office of Emergency Services "immediately, but no longer than 30 minutes after discovery of a discharge of oil or threatened discharge of oil."

If it is found that the captain of the ship was taking emergency actions to limit the spill, that would be taken into account, state authorities said.

"We will be looking at what the master was doing between the time of the incident and the time of the notification," said Steve Sawyer, supervising attorney at the state office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response. "But I'm certainly not going to sue somebody if he was trying to minimize the spill."

The one-hour delay could have allowed the spill to spread a considerable distance from the ship, making it worse.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Craig Bone provided MediaNews a timeline of events last Wednesday that showed the ship's captain promptly notified the Coast Guard of the spill but delayed reporting the incident to the O'Brien's Group, a Los Angeles oil spill management company that the ship's owner employs.

He would not say whether the Cosco Busan's delay in reporting the incident to the O'Brien's Group was appropriate but said there are numerous issues to be addressed in the minutes after a collision that affect safety of the crew and the condition of the ship.

"There's a lot of things that happen on a ship other than pollution," Bone said.

Bone has acknowledged the Coast Guard failed to promptly alert local authorities of the size of the spill, but he has maintained that the agency responded aggressively and quickly to the spill itself.

According to Bone, the Coast Guard received notification of the incident at 8:32 a.m., shortly after it occurred. By 9:04 a.m., a Coast Guard vessel with a pollution investigation team and a damage assessment team was on its way from Treasure Island to the crash site, where it arrived at 9:13 a.m.

The team determined the bridge was safe and set off for the Cosco Busan, which it caught up with at 9:35 a.m.

He said because of heavy fog and the possibility that containers from the ship were in the water, the vessel could not move at high speed.

A second Coast Guard vessel was summoned from Sausalito at 10 a.m.

The Cosco Busan notified the O'Brien's Group of the incident before the first Coast Guard vessel arrived at 9:35, Bone said. He placed the time of the notification at about 9:30 a.m.

The O'Brien's Group dispatched cleanup crews, which got skimming equipment and 5,000 feet of boom on the water within an hour of being notified and another 3,000 feet of boom on the water and more skimming equipment in the next hour.

Barry McFarland, a spokesman for O'Brien's, declined Tuesday night to discuss details, saying the spill was under investigation. However, on Friday, he said contractors working with his firm left the docks at 9:40 a.m. and deployed the first skimmers and boom on the spill by 10 a.m.

The two companies contracted by the O'Brien's Group performed cleanup drills in the past six months, state Fish and Game officials said Tuesday.

One, Marine Spill Response Corporation, completed a drill in August in Suisun Bay. The other, National Response Corporation, completed a drill in March in Santa Barbara.

"They did outstanding. They met or exceeded our expectations," said Chris Klumpp, an oil spill prevention supervisor with the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response in Sacramento.

Klumpp said both drills involved putting boom and skimmers on the water and were the kind of unannounced events that his office conducts at least once a year involving the two companies.

Schwarzenegger, who called the spill "heartbreaking" and "outrageous," banned fishing to the extent the angling is meant for food. He left the door open for state officials to extend or reduce the length of the ban.

State scientists were still trying to figure out exactly which areas would be closed to fishing under the governor's order, but it definitely will include the entire San Francisco Bay and areas extending from closed beaches outside the Golden Gate to three miles offshore, according to Carlos Fonseca, an oil spill prevention specialist with the Department of Fish and Game.

More areas could be added, he said.

Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, which represents commercial anglers, said he supported the governor's decision to close the fisheries. Crab fishermen had requested their fishery be closed out of fear that contaminated crab would do long-term damage to their industry.

"We're going to take some losses and in some cases they could be large losses," Grader said. "The alternative would be the complete loss of consumer confidence, and then you could be looking at huge losses — like in the tens of millions instead of just a few million."

For crab, the problem was the seawater recirculation systems used by the boats and processors that could contaminate crabmeat. Herring fishermen will ask for a delay to their scheduled Dec. 2 season opening, Grader said.

For sport anglers and those who rely on the Bay for their food, the closure also could cause difficulties.

Torm Nompraseurt, Laotian Organizing Project coordinator of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, said that the oil spill will have a huge impact on some Laotian families.

He said one of his main concerns is how people will find out about the closure.

"How will our folks who don't speak much English understand that the beach is closed?" he asked.

Of the 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel that spilled, about 12,270 gallons have been recovered. So far, 774 live birds have been collected and 587 dead ones have been found. Not all of the dead birds were killed by the oil; many could have died from other causes.

No threatened or endangered species or marine mammals have been found that are suffering from the spill, state officials said.

One top state lawmaker was demanding answers Tuesday.

"In an oil spill, the first few hours are the most important," said Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley. "Clearly the response in this spill took too long for the Bay. We have oil up the coastline and across the Bay."

Hancock, chairwoman of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, has scheduled a state hearing to investigate the spill for Thursday morning in Emeryville.

MediaNews staff writers Mary Anne Ostrom, Momo Chang and Ryan Huff contributed to this story.