Contact: CWO Amy Midgett
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| ROV Control Room
MORRO BAY, Calif. - Global Diving & Salvage remotely operated vehicle technicans navigate the ROV around the sunken World War II tanker S.S. Montebello, Oct. 12, 2011. The ROV completed the initial visual inspection of the Montebello and found no possible hazards that could impede the mission going further. Photo by Robert Schwemmer, NOAA. |
Members of the Pacific Strike Team recently played key roles in the assessment, survey, and sampling evolutions that took place on the S.S. Montebello from Oct. 11- 21, 2011.
The S.S. Montebello was struck by the torpedo of a Japanese submarine and sank off of Cambria, Calif., Dec. 23, 1941, while en route to British Columbia to deliver a two million gallon cargo of crude oil. The crew survived, but the vessel’s cargo and one million gallons of fuel was thought to have remained on board as it sank to a depth of approximately 900 feet.
Although a scientific survey conducted in 1996 revealed that the wreck was mostly intact, particularly in the areas containing the cargo tanks, concern grew over the potential for the vessel to release any remaining cargo and fuel. Unfortunately, the technology present at the time made any sort of identification and recovery operations unlikely.
Monitoring of the vessel continued until 2011, when Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles/Long Beach and the California Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Spill Prevention partnered to conduct a survey of the vessel’s hull and take samples from the cargo tanks using newly developed techniques in oil identification and sample collection. The goal of the operation was to determine if oil was still present on the vessel and, if so, how likely it was that the oil would be released due to hull degradation.
Sector Los Angeles/Long Beach requested PST assistance with executing several critical aspects of the Montebello survey. To establish an Incident Command Post, PST members aided in the mobilization and deployment of Coast Guard Communications Area Master Station Pacific’s eMobile Incident Command Post, providing invaluable infrastructure and resources to over 20 state and federal responders throughout the course of the survey.
PST personnel also supplemented the sector’s workforce with pollution response knowledge and expertise, contributing to the successful oversight and implementation of the survey. PST Response Officers, Response Supervisors, and Response Members provided technical assistance in selecting, executing, and monitoring the contracted salvage company workers as they employed state-of-the-art technology to survey and retrieve samples from the vessel.
Additionally, PST members worked side by side with the National Pollution Funds Center to manage $3.5 million of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund allotted for the survey, ensuring meticulous cost documentation and stewardship of the Fund.
The combined efforts of the federal and state officials led to a successful vessel survey and retrieval of samples from the cargo tanks. No oil was found in the vessel’s cargo tanks or the surrounding sediment. The survey was a resounding success in that it validated new oil-identification technology and eliminated the possibility of current or future pollution threats from Montebello, much to the joy of the State of California and countless coastal communities.
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