Two vessels sank in the Mobile shipping channel late one night, leaving behind an oil sheen roughly 50 yards wide and stretching about a mile, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Mobile sector.
A 52-foot towing vessel and a 26-foot dredging boat both went down north of Gaillard Island around 10:46 p.m., Coast Guard officials said. Crews aboard a third vessel in the area, the towing boat Miss Sammy Lee, responded to distress calls and rescued everyone aboard both sinking boats before Coast Guard watchstanders in Mobile were alerted to the incident.
After the rescue, a Coast Guard Station Dauphin Island small boat crew transferred the rescued crew members from the Miss Sammy Lee to Dog River Marina, where they were brought safely ashore. No injuries were reported in connection with the sinkings.
All three vessels had been conducting dredging operations in the area at the time of the incident, officials said. Response crews moved quickly to contain the spill, deploying a containment boom around the wreckage of the two sunken boats, which together were carrying an estimated 2,000 gallons of fuel and lubricating oil.
Coast Guard officials said response teams remained on scene working through recovery efforts in the days following the sinkings, and were developing a salvage plan to remove the vessels from the channel. Because the ship channel serves as a key route for maritime traffic moving in and out of the Port of Mobile, authorities worked to monitor the sheen and prevent it from spreading further while salvage operations were organized.
The Coast Guard’s Mobile sector, which oversees a stretch of waterways along the central Gulf Coast, said it would continue to provide updates as the situation developed. Vessel sinkings involving fuel spills in and around the Mobile ship channel are taken seriously given the channel’s role as a heavily trafficked corridor for commercial shipping, and officials said the response was aimed at limiting environmental impact while the wreckage was assessed and eventually removed.