Shipwreck Oil Killing Birds Off Washington

More than 400 birds, including two bald eagles, and three sea otters were mired in oil Monday as Canadian authorities commissioned a submarine to see if the leak from a sunken Japanese ship could be controlled.

The birds, mostly murres, were recovered by rescue workers; 139 of them were dead, but the bald eagles and 302 others survived and may be saved.

Oil was spewing from the 360,000-gallon tanks of the fish processor Tenyo Maru, which sank in the Pacific Ocean about 25 miles off Washington after it and a Chinese freighter collided on July 22.

Experts estimated that 100,000 gallons of oil from the wreck had drifted over a 500-square-mile area.

The slick had reached as far south as Destruction Island, about 30 miles south of Neah Bay, an American Indian village on the state’s northwestern tip.

The Canadian Coast Guard planned to use a three-person, 17-foot-long submarine to dive on the wreck and try to determine how to stop the leak. The ship is believed to be 500 feet below the surface.