Anchorage Daily News

The Coast Guard will begin tracking ship traffic electronically through the Aleutian Islands this summer, providing data that eventually could demonstrate the need for new equipment to prevent shipwrecks in the heavily traveled region, agency officials said Tuesday at a shipping safety forum in Anchorage.

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But the new automatic identification system, to be installed by June, probably would not have made a difference for the Selendang Ayu, the 738-foot freighter that ran aground on Unalaska Island last December, Capt. Jack Davin, the Coast Guard's chief of marine safety in Alaska, said later.

The ship would have been beyond the tracking system's range when it lost power in the Bering Sea and began its deadly drift, Davin said. Six crewmen died during an attempt to lift them off the stricken ship after it grounded. The freighter later broke in half, spilling nearly 350,000 gallons of oil and some 60,000 tons of soybeans.

"I wouldn't think (the tracking system) would be a solution for that type of accident," Davin said. But the information it gleans on Aleutian traffic is the first step toward making shipping in the region safer, he added.

In the meantime, workers this week began returning to Unalaska to resume the Selendang Ayu cleanup and start planning the hull removal. Beach crews should be on the job in mid-April, state officials said. They will continue cleaning up oil and may have to remove windrows of soybeans on some beaches.

The Selendang Ayu grounding has focused attention on the hazards facing some 1,000 to 2,000 large commercial ships that take the great circle route between North America and Asia every year. The shortcut passes through the Aleutians twice -- entering and leaving the Bering Sea.

While the Coast Guard has little authority over "vessels of innocent passage," new federal security laws require all ships to transmit information about themselves when passing through U.S. waters. Shore-based receivers pick up the information, including the name and size of the vessel, its course and its speed.

The technology is already being used elsewhere in Alaska, including Southeast and Cook Inlet, Davin said. The next receiver will be set up on the edge of 25-mile-wide Unimak Pass, the route taken by the Selendang Ayu on its way from Seattle to China.

Over time, the Coast Guard will develop solid information rather than estimates on vessel traffic in the region.

"We're just trying to wrap our arms around how much traffic is going through there," Davin said. Once better numbers are known, the agency can prepare a risk assessment.

Residents of the region and advocates of safer shipping have called for one or two large, powerful tugs to be stationed in the Aleutians. The risk assessment could prove the need, Davin said.

But it could also work the other way, he added. The data could show that the danger is low and that "maybe it's not worth spending lots and lots of money," he said. "You have to be able to justify the expense."

The risk assessment itself could be years off, Davin said, and decisions on tugboats even further out.

Other ideas about improving shipping safety and oil spill response in the North Pacific also bubbled to the surface at Tuesday's forum, which was held in the Wilda Marston Theatre at Loussac Library and organized by the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program and the Alaska Oceans Program.

Roger Holt, secretary-general of the London-based Intercargo, an organization of shippers that carry dry bulk goods, said his group supports a wide range of safety improvements, including self-regulation, international laws and national requirements.

But he also urged others at the forum to consider the importance of his industry as they consider solutions to shipping safety, and to keep in mind the importance of a healthy shipping industry.

"Ocean shipping is the linchpin of the global economy," Holt said.

Jan Lane, director of the National Pollution Funds Center, which at one time had grown to $1 billion through a 5 cent-per-barrel tax on imported oil and petroleum products, said the fund helps pay for oil spill response when the ship owner can't.

But the fund is running dry, she said, which could affect future cleanups. The 5-cent tax died in 1994 and hasn't been renewed. Now the fund's investments can't keep pace with the cost of uninsured oil spills.

While the forum focused on the Aleutians, Lawson Brigham of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission reminded participants that global warming could eventually open the Arctic Ocean to shipping. Imagine what would happen if the Selendang Ayu had run aground farther north, he said.

Lois Epstein, representing the water quality watchdog group Cook Inlet Keeper, suggested the Coast Guard not forget Cook Inlet when it considers the need for powerful tug escorts. The water body has tremendous traffic, including fully laden oil tankers, and a shipwreck there could be disastrous, she said.

While much of the forum focused on preventing the next spill, the Selendang Ayu still sits on the edge of Skan Bay. Though the bow section disappeared underwater in December, the stern is still partially above water.

Whether the hull can be removed remains to be seen, said Gary Folley of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Surveyors will take a close look at the two halves when weather allows later this spring and come up with a plan. It could include cutting the ship into smaller pieces or using explosives to blast it apart, he said.

The ship's soybean cargo has proven tougher than previously thought, Folley said. An underwater camera showed beans up to a foot deep on the ocean floor around the shipwreck, though in most places the layer was thin. But on shore, the legumes are still piled deep.

If they show signs of disintegration this spring, crews may leave the cleanup job to nature, Folley said. But the beans also may have to be shoveled up and moved if they don't break up on their own.

Oil remains on some beaches, though an estimated 70 percent of the most heavily affected beaches have already been cleaned, said Capt. Ron Morris, the Coast Guard's on-scene coordinator. Efforts this spring will focus on cleaning up the rest, and even checking nearby islands for signs of tar balls.

Daily News reporter Joel Gay can be reached at jgay@adn.com or at 257-4310.