The Observer, May 2005

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Spring exercises train fishing vessel crews to be ready

If there’s another North Slope crude oil spill in Prince William Sound or the Gulf of Alaska, fishing vessels from the Sound, the Kenai Peninsula, and Kodiak Island will play a key role in the cleanup effort.

Alyeska keeps over 300 of the vessels under contract, and conducts periodic training exercises to make sure they’re ready for action when needed.

This spring’s exercises took place in Seward, Homer, and Kodiak, as well as Cordova, Valdez and other Prince William Sound locations. Most of the exercises were observed by council project managers Roy Robertson and Tony Parkin, and Observer editor Stan Jones attended the April 28 exercise in Nelson Bay, near Cordova. The photographs on these pages capture not only some of the things that go on during the exercises, but a little of the beauty of the environment they are designed to protect.

Photos by Stan Jones, Roy Robertson, and Vince Kelly (ADEC):

Various types of boom await deployment for training exercises in Port Valdez on a morning in late April.

Responses are managed from a floating command center on a barge called the 500-2, shown above (left) near Cordova on April 28. Right: Alyeska’s Steve Johns monitors progress via computer screen on the 500-2 during the exercise.

A "Rescue at Sea" INJURY – The April 28 training exercises in Nelson Bay included a simulated medical emergency. Clockwise from top left: A fishing boat crew member – represented by a medical dummy – was injured in a fall. He was transferred to the fishing vessel Rejoice, which served as the medical boat for the exercise, and was taken alongside the response barge where the training was being managed. There, he was hoisted aboard for transport to Anchorage by helicopter. An actual helicopter came down from Anchorage for realism, but left the dummy behind when it returned to base.

BEAUTIFUL WORKPLACES
Left, several fishing vessels participate in exercises near Chenega in early May. Right, a fishing vessel called the Polecat pulls a CurrentBuster booming system away from the 500-2 barge in Port Valdez.

Removing Spilled Oil From the Environment
	How Skimming Works Two fishing vessels tow the containment boom in a U or V shape to capture floating oil. They stop, and a third fishing vessel – here, the Bonnie Jean, photographed during the April 28 exercise near Cordova – moves to the apex of the boom with a minbarge tethered to its side. A skimmer is placed inside the boom and skimmed oil is pumped through a hose across the deck of the Bonnie Jean into the minibarge. When the oil inside the boom has been skimmed off, the skimmer is hoisted back aboard the Bonnie Jean and the process starts over. The technique shown here is called static skimming, but other configurations are also used. Skimming is the mainstay of oil-spill response planning for Prince William Sound, because it truly cleans up spilled oil and removes it from the environment.