Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fishermen Fight Oil Spill With Buckets, Tears Nearly 1 Million Gallons Washes Ashore At One Of Japan’s Best Fishing Grounds

Associated Press

Diving in cresting waves of spilled oil along the western coast Wednesday, Japanese who live off the sea used crude tools at hand - buckets - to skim the sludge off the surf.

Their efforts were no match for the massive slick stretching along Japan’s rocky shoreline, one of the country’s worst spills.

Fisherman Tadao Meiji predicted it would take three or four years for the sea urchin and seaweed harvests to rebound.

“I would like some compensation - anything - just to keep my family eating,” Meiji said.

Ayaka Konaka has been diving off the coast for 60 years, making her living from what seaweed and shellfish she can find. “It makes me want to cry,” she said. “The sea urchins, the seaweed - they’re all lost.’

Oil from a Russian tanker that split and sank last week hit this secluded coast Tuesday, and cleanup crews and residents have fought stormy seas to limit the damage.

The 962,000-gallon slick soiled scenic beaches and the best near-shore fishing grounds in the area, a favorite summer tourist spot 200 miles west of Tokyo.

Local officials complain that tourists already are canceling reservations.

As fishermen and women who dive for seaweed and shellfish passed buckets of oil Wednesday, coast guard helicopters buzzed overhead, dropping chemicals to try to dissolve the sludge.

Nearby, 120 cleanup workers struggled in chest-high water thick with slimy mudlike oil, some trying to vacuum it up through a pipe into a truck.

Crews have been trying to stop more oil from leaking from the floating bow of the wrecked ship, the 13,157-ton Nakhodka.

The Japanese coast guard warned that more clusters of oil could hit other nearby areas later.

The spill at Mikuni extends for about a mile along the coast.

“It’s very hard to estimate the scope of the damage yet,” said Masahiro Honda, a member of the town’s special emergency task force. “We won’t really know until the spring when the fishermen start bringing in their harvests.”

The Nakhodka, bound for Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, was carrying 5 million gallons of fuel oil when it broke in two on Jan. 2, 90 miles off the coast.