EXXON VALDEZ IS STILL AT ISLAND; MARINE LIFE THRIVES IN ITS TANKS

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News Reporter

VALDEZ- The tanker Exxon Valdez has been ready for a week to be towed to a Portland drydock, but Exxon canceled an appointment there, and the dock will not be available again until mid August.

The ship remains anchored in a bay on the south side of Prince William Sound's Naked Island, where its ruptured oil tanks, cleaned twice, have become a haven for marine life. Although badly damaged, marine architects say it can be moved without breaking up or sinking.

Exxon has not yet presented the Coast Guard with a plan to move the vessel.

The dock in Portland appears to be the only one on the West Coast large enough for the 987 foot ship that was shredded on Bligh Reef March 24. Drydocks in Korea, Taiwan and Japan are probably too far away for the tanker to make the trip safely.

The Exxon Valdez is in bad shape. Damage extends along 700 feet of its hull; it includes a hole in its 3|4inchthick, highstrength steel that is 18 feet wide and estimated to be from 26 to 60 feet long. A large crack across the ship's hull threatens to cut it in half. It is one of hundreds of cracks all over the bottom of the ship.

Robert C. Clark Jr., chief scientist on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ship Fairweather, saw a videotape of the underside of the tanker when he was on board last month.

"The number of punctures and openings on the bottom was quite impressive," he said from the Fairweather Wednesday. "I was quite amazed. I'm not an expert, but I was amazed that this ship was still afloat. I was sitting in a very comfortable, air conditioned officers' lounge, and I was aware that we were just floating on a foot or two of air."

Salvage experts removed the tanker from Bligh Reef by pumping air into the top of its cargo tanks. That air in the sealed tanks is still keeping the ship afloat.

Clark, whose team is trying to assess the effect of the spill on marine life, took samples of organisms thriving inside the tanks. Researchers fished with gillnets without success for a school of herring that swam through one of the tanks.

Clark said he collected small, colorless jellyfish and a species of freeswimming mollusk. There is a rich crop of algae, fungus and protozoa in the tanks. He said it appeared that marine life was thicker inside the tanker than outside, and he theorized that organisms may be thriving on carbon in the trace of oil left on the underwater walls of the tanks.

But he said it does not necessarily follow that the oil is causing such growth on oiled beaches outside the tanker, where the environment is harsher and the oil more weathered.

The small oceans inside the ship were like another world. The researchers climbed through hatches just large enough to pass through, then descended 50foot ladders to the water, Clark said.

"You had this great, huge metal box with a few small spots of daylight up above, and a few electric lights swinging back and forth, and all the rest was total darkness," Clark said. "It sort of reminded me of what it must look like to see the boatmen on the River Styx, you know, in Greek mythology. You would see these two fishermen in their disposable rain gear paddling their inflatable rubber raft in and out of the shafts of light far below you in the darkness."

Clark said he has never heard of such research being possible in a tanker before.

Life is quiet now aboard the tanker, said Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Keith Darby, an engineer who spent 60 days on board after it hit the reef. The work of preparing towing cables on the bow is complete and the sailors are bored.

"The guys who have been on board are basically tired of sitting there," Darby said. "They've done everything they wanted to accomplish as far as salvage the vessel, save the vessel, and be ready to leave."

Divers drilled 400 3 inch holes at the ends of cracks to keep them from spreading and installed wire strain gauges to detect areas where the ship might be pulling apart. There were no readings on the gauges because the ship is holding together, Darby said.

He said it was impossible to strap the ship together with cables because of its size and the extent of the damage. The holes in the hull were too large to patch.

Darby and others aboard were worried two months ago that the ship would capsize and sink when it floated off the reef.

"Most of the guys there were a little apprehensive about it," he said. "It just came right straight up. You almost didn't notice the difference of being floating as compared to being on the rocks."

Although the nearly 11 million gallons of oil that spilled from it were lost hours after it hit the rocks, Darby said the Exxon Valdez probably received most of the large holes later, during the week when tides lifted it up and set it down again, pivoting the ship on the reef.

The ship probably damaged the reef, too. Boulders, some as large as a Volkswagen, are still lodged in the ship's hull, Darby said.

Darby, a marine inspector, says the ship is now ready to go. It is clean and marine architects have said that it will not break in half unless it encounters seas of 20 or 30 feet. But it will have to be loaded so that the center tanks have more floatation than the bow and stern, reducing stress on the fractured bottom of the ship.

The ship will probably need a crew and a supply of fuel to run air compressors during the passage, said Olaf Hatlen, a marine architect hired by Alaska, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to study the ship and advise them whether or not they should allow it to pass near their shores. The compressors might be called upon to alter the ship's buoyancy for changing wave conditions, Hatlen said.

Darby said he is waiting for Exxon to decide the ship's destination so he can give his final OK.

Exxon had reserved the Port of Portland's floating drydock for June 19, but canceled the date a week ago, said Senior Dockmaster Jeff Twine. The next time the dock is available is Aug. 12, Twine said.

Portland is a 12 day journey, Darby said. The ship would average 5 or 6 miles per hour to make the trip in 12 days.

The dry dock in San Diego where the Exxon Valdez was built is probably not deep enough to take it in its current condition. A trip to docks in the Far East would take 30 days of travel against the current and against waves that would tend to lift the ship's bow and stern, placing stress on the transverse cracks in the hull, Darby said.

Twine said a month would be sufficient in the Portland drydock to survey the damage and get bids from repair yards. The actual repair would take six months or more, he said.

A press release from the Port of Portland said Exxon canceled its reservation because it is "still evaluating the future of the vessel," and could not be sure it would be ready for the space.

Exxon spokesmen in Valdez did not know the status or destination of the ship Wednesday.

State officials are anxious to get rid of the infamous tanker.

"The sooner it leaves and gets down to a drydock to get dealt with the better," said Bill Lamoreaux, regional supervisor for the Department of Environmental Conservation. He said he is afraid the ship could sink and leak the tens of thousands of gallons of fuel it carries for its engines and generators into Alaska waters.

On May 24 the Department of Natural Resources gave Exxon a two week extension on a permit to anchor the ship in Outside Bay on Naked Island. The permit now lasts until June 13 and carries the provision that Exxon must give the state four to seven day's notice before it moves the ship.

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