Captain Risked Worse Oil Spill, by Rocking Tanker,Tapes Show

Radio messages recorded on the morning the Exxon Valdez hit a reef show that the ship’s captain spent up to an hour trying to rock the tanker free, which could have sunk the ship and spilled more oil, the Coast Guard said Tuesday.

The captain ignored Coast Guard warnings that trying to move the ship could have made the nation’s worst oil spill almost five times worse, the recordings show.

The state also revised the estimate of the oil spilled from the tanker’s punctured tanks to 11.2 million gallons. Officials said its crews had been busy with the cleanup and were slow revising Exxon’s original estimate of 10.1 million gallons.

Environmental damage from the oil still is being assessed, but three hatcheries in oil-soaked Prince William Sound have begun releasing millions of tiny salmon because the annual bloom of plankton, an important food source for the fry, was at its peak.

Exxon estimates that at least 1 million gallons of oil still is floating on the water of the sound and the Gulf of Alaska, and the fry may encounter oil.

The recorded radio messages showed that Coast Guard Cmdr. Steve McCall in Valdez warned Exxon Valdez Capt. Joseph Hazelwood to take it “slow and easy” in trying to get his ship off the reef that ripped his hull on March 24.

“Before you make any drastic attempt to get away, make sure you don’t, you know, start doing any ripping,” McCall said. “You got a rising tide . . . . I wouldn’t recommend doing much wiggling.”

But Hazelwood already had begun trying to free the tanker.

“A little problem here with the third mate, but we’re working our way off the reef,” Hazelwood said. “We’ve, ah, the vessel has been holed and we’re ascertaining right now, we’re trying to get her off the reef and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

The third mate was Gregory Cousins, who Exxon says had been given control of the ship as it maneuvered through Prince William Sound. Cousins was not certified to control the ship in the sound.

The radio tapes were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Anchorage Daily News.