Oil Spill Stalls as Winds Shift Away From Kodiak

Rough seas that helped stall and break up some of the giant oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez became calmer Tuesday and winds shifted away from fish-rich Kodiak Island, the Coast Guard reported.

“Kodiak still seems to be saved,” said Jim Hayden, the state’s cleanup coordinator.

Coast Guard spokesman Ken Freeze said the spill appears to have stalled and is breaking into tar balls. “That’s better than ooey, gooey oil,” he said.

Equipment continued to pour into the area aboard military transports. About 67 tons of material, everything from containment booms to absorbent pads, were scheduled to arrive by the end of the day.

A huge Soviet oil-skimming vessel, the Vay Dagursky, was expected to arrive Saturday, state officials said. The ship can skim 200,000 gallons an hour and store 2 million gallons of oil on board, according to the officials. But it remained unclear how effective it might be against the Alaska spill.

Despite the favorable weather, a light sheen of oil seeped into Kenai Fjords National Park at scattered inlets, Freeze said. With a thickness measured in molecules, the sheen does not threaten serious environmental damage, he said.

Coast Guard officials said they plan to deploy a flotilla of 30 fishing boats from Seward and six from Kodiak, along with a Coast Guard cutter, to drag small-holed herring and shrimp nets through the leading edge of the slick.

Coast Guard Capt. Joe Blackett said tests Monday showed that the nets break the oil into small globs, which do not re-form.

Monday’s rough weather, which saw seas at 15 feet, gale-force wind warnings and small-craft advisories, turned calmer Tuesday. Aerial spotter flights resumed, seas were reduced to five to seven feet and winds shifted from the northwest. That could steer oil to the southeast and away from the coastline and Kodiak, the nation’s richest fishing port last year.

Oil has not traveled farther southwest than Gore Point, about 80 miles northeast of Kodiak, in four days, officials said.

“The weather did get very rough out there,” said Hal Alabaster, spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Under certain conditions, these weather factors could be very beneficial.”

The spill has killed thousands of birds and animals, and gasoline prices in the United States have surged in the wake of the disaster.