Shipwrecks in the Aleutians

The few people who live in Alaska's Aleutian Islands have long been accustomed to shipwrecks. They have been part of local consciousness since a Japanese whaling ship ran aground near the western end of the 1,100-mile (1,800-km) volcanic archipelago in 1780, inadvertently naming what is now Rat Island when the ship's infestation scurried ashore and made itself at home. Since then, there have been at least 190 shipwrecks in the islands. 

In the past decade, shipwrecks have become less frequent, but larger. In 1997 the Kuroshima, a freighter, ran aground on Unalaska Island—home to the Aleutians' only four-figure population—spilling 39,000 gallons (148,000 litres) of heavy fuel. In December 2004 a Malaysia-flagged freighter, the Selendang Ayu, lost power and crashed into the northern shore of Unalaska, splitting in half in a subsequent storm and spilling some 328,000 gallons of fuel, the worst such incident in Alaska since the Exxon Valdez was wrecked in Prince William Sound in 1989.

Then there are the close calls. On July 23rd last year the Cougar Ace, a Singapore-flagged car carrier transporting 4,700 Mazdas from Japan to Vancouver, rolled onto its side south of the Aleutians. Salvage contractors, aided by unusually good marine weather, were able to tow the listing ship into Unalaska Island's port of Dutch Harbor. In December, a bulk freighter loaded with wheat limped into Dutch Harbor with engine problems similar to those that led to the Selendang Ayu disaster.
 
In this section many large vessels meet unhappy ends in the Aleutians has to do with the geography of international shipping. The archipelago is a hazardous traffic median in the great circle route, the shortest path between ports on either side of the North Pacific. An estimated 3,100 large vessels thread between the islands each year on their way west, and a similar number travel the eastward route across the North Pacific just south of the Aleutians. 

Traffic is likely to increase along with the growth of international trade, but there are few safeguards in place. The nearest large rescue tugboats are stationed in Prince William Sound, too far away to be of much use. Vessels over 300 gross tonnes must carry automatic identification system (AIS) transmitters, but the two AIS receivers in the Aleutians only cover about 10% of the islands. Foreign-flagged vessels are not required to carry plans for oil spill response or salvage, except for ports where they intend to dock.
This lack of maritime surveillance and disaster preparedness is not unique to the great circle route, but the nasty local conditions are. The storms that routinely batter ships on the Bering Sea are legendary.

A full-scale safety review is in the pipeline, but in the meantime a big oil terminal on the southern end of Russia's Sakhalin Island could open this year, resulting in a spike in eastward oil tanker travel along the route. And the Bush administration's decision on January 9th to lift a moratorium on oil drilling in nearby Bristol Bay, where Shell hopes to develop natural gas resources, could further increase Aleutian traffic. Expect more wrecks.