No one injured, divers continue search for fuel tanks
The Kaisei, a large double-masted sailing vessel known for its past missions to raise awareness about the problem of marine debris, started to sink shortly after 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 25, at a dock in the Oakland Estuary behind Alameda’s Nob Hill Foods grocery store on Blanding Avenue.
Alameda Fire Department (AFD) responded at 6:13 p.m., when crews found the unoccupied clipper sailboat “submerged up to its deck,” according to a report on the AFD Facebook page.
“Firefighters utilized the Fire Boat to move a nearby vessel to a safe location and worked to cut the sinking vessel from the dock to prevent further damage to the dock and pilings,” the AFD report stated. “AFD worked with Oakland Fire Department crews to deploy a floating boom around the incident to prevent further spread of fluids and debris.”
US Coast Guard Petty Officer Chris Sappey told ABC News “there was a slight visible sheen after the vessel sunk, which now has been suspected to be from a container of motor oil that was on board the vessel, but not actually from the fuel tanks.”
Sappey noted that two of the accessible fuel tanks were checked by salvage divers and were found to not contain anything inside of them. However, Sappey said, there were still three fuel tanks that divers hadn’t been able to get to, which could be carrying as much as 400 gallons of diesel fuel.
It is not believed that those are leaking and there are now booms surrounding the vessel, he added. No water rescues were performed and no one was injured, the Coast Guard confirmed.
The approximately 100-foot ship is owned by the Ocean Voyages Institute, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Kenneth Wiese told the San Francisco Chronicle. It was named after the Sausalito nonprofit’s Kaisei Project, which focused on cleaning marine debris, trash, and plastics from the ocean.
The Kaisei had previously been used as a Japanese training vessel. It sailed on three scientific voyages to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
It’s unclear what caused the Kaisei to sink, but officials from Ocean Voyages said in a statement that “the Coast Guard believes that the sinking may have been caused by something large hitting the vessel.”
Ocean Voyages said efforts to contain spilled oil and gas “have been successful. We are continuing to give our full attention to making sure that all fuel and oil on the ship is removed so that it does not cause any pollution in the waters. Once all of the environmental concerns are addressed, we will be dealing with salvaging the vessel.”
In its statement, which appeared in full on ABC News, Ocean Voyages expressed “huge thanks to the Alameda Fire Department, the U.S. Coast Guard, the State of California Fish and Wildlife division, the Alameda Police Department, and Stones Boatyard.
“Alameda Fire Department put out the first booms around the ship to make sure no fuel or oil escaped the area. We called in Parker Diving, who put out additional booms. Then NCR Republic have been working removing any oil captured by the booms. Power Engineering is removing all fuel from the vessel.”
The Kaisei’s history included serving as “a vital platform for global sail training since 2004 and ocean research since 2009, including expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre in partnership with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and California EPA,” Ocean Voyages stated. “The ship’s pioneering work laid the foundation for Ocean Voyages Institute’s record-setting cleanup operations, including the use of satellite-tagged ‘ghost nets’ recovered by wind-powered vessels.”
Alamedans will surely miss the familiar sight of the Kaisei.
