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Sunken tugboat causes oil spill in Hood Canal

Workers using a small boat try to contain an oil spill near the docks at the Caicos Mill in Port Gamble, Wash., on Monday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press
Workers using a small boat try to contain an oil spill near the docks at the Caicos Mill in Port Gamble, Wash., on Monday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

PORT GAMBLE, Wash. – A diesel fuel spill that created a sheen Monday in Hood Canal near the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula was traced to a sunken tugboat, the state Department of Ecology said.

It was not immediately clear how or when the 91-foot “Agate” sank, although Coast Guard Petty Officer Adam Eggers said investigators believed it happened late Sunday or early Monday.

The tug was not in service. “It was an old one somebody had moored there,” Ecology spokesman Larry Altose said.

By late Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard was estimating that 100 gallons of red marine fuel – dyed red because it’s not for highway use – had spilled, Eggers said.

Fuel was no longer seeping from the tug by Monday afternoon, the Coast Guard said, noting that the fuel was not recoverable and was expected to evaporate.

Crews found a second sunken boat nearby, but there was no fuel or any other substance leaking from it, Altose said. He did not have any information about the size or type of the boat, which he identified as the “Legacy.”

The state had received reports that pockets of oil had been spotted on the water from the Hood Canal Bridge area to the waterway’s entrance, several miles to the north, Altose said.

Some fuel came ashore along the Port Gamble waterfront, and teams were following up on reports of shoreline areas affected on the east side of the harbor, the Coast Guard said.

Altose said he did not know of any immediate reports that wildlife had been harmed.

The state called in contractors to deploy protective booms to keep contaminated water from reaching environmentally sensitive areas.

Altose said a property owner in Port Gamble had already deployed one by midday. “I don’t know how effective it is, but they’ve pitched in,” Altose said.

The spill happened about a year after 1,000 gallons of oil spilled from a tanker near Tacoma’s Commencement Bay, fouling more than 20 miles of shoreline.

The Oct. 14, 2004, spill in Dalco Passage – and criticism of the state’s response to it – led to the formation of an oil spill advisory council, modeled after a similar group created in Prince William Sound, Alaska, after the Exxon Valdez spill.