FV Mar-Gun; St. George Isl, Pribilof Isls, Bering Sea, Alaska

St. George Isl, Pribilof Isls, Bering Sea, Alaska | 2009-Mar-05

Initial Notification: The Alaskan SSC was notified at 0600 March 5 by Sector Anchorage that the 112 foot FV Mar-Gun grounded on the north side of St. George Island, the more southern of the two Pribilof Islands in the SE Bering Sea, Alaska. Five POB and the vessel had 15,000 gallons of diesel and grounded in 18 to 25 ft. of water. At the moment the Coast Guard is treating the incident strictly as a SAR case, although NOAA SSC and Sector Anchorage personnel are gearing up to treat this as a pollution case, and have called for a UC meeting morning of March 5. NOAA is providing weather, tides, ADIOS runs, and possible trajectories and impacts. Dan Magone from Dutch Harbor was hired as the vessel salvor to extricate it from its rocky grounding on the shoreline on the N. side of St. George Island. After several fits and starts, bad weather, labor difficulties, broken equipment,etc, etc. the vessel was finally refloated around the first of May and was taken to Dutch Harbor for final repairs. No significant amounts of oil were released during the incident.