Two Vessels Sink in Mobile Ship Channel, Leaving Oil Sheen Near Gaillard Island
The U.S. Coast Guard says two vessels sank overnight in the Mobile ship channel, leaving a mile-long oil sheen near Gaillard Island north of the city.
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.
The Coast Guard’s Mobile sector said it would continue to provide updates as the situation developed.
About Gaillard Island
Gaillard Island, near where the boats went down, is a roughly 1,300-acre triangular island the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built in Mobile Bay beginning in 1979 from material dredged for a ship channel. It has become an important nesting site for seabirds and shorebirds and has been Alabama’s only nesting colony for brown pelicans.
