Tanker Captain Takes Partial Blame

The captain of a crippled tanker that released about 185,000 gallons of fuel into the waters off the Galapagos Islands said he was to blame for grounding the vessel but not for “one drop” of spill.

Capt. Tarquino Arevalo, 58, who apparently mistook a signal buoy for a lighthouse when the Jessica ran aground Jan. 16, is under arrest at a naval base here. Arevalo and the tanker’s owners could face two to four years in prison if convicted of negligence or crimes against the environment.

“I am directly responsible for what happened, responsible for grounding the vessel. That I accept,” Arevalo said at the Ecuadorean naval base medical clinic late Thursday. “I recognize my fault until that point . . . but about the pollution, what can I do?”

The veteran seaman, stammering and in tears, said that if officials from the Galapagos National Park had called for help early, all of the oil could have been removed from the vessel with no damage to the ecosystem, populated by rare species that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The leak began nearly three days after the vessel ran aground.

“We would not have had one drop of contamination” if they had acted, he said.

Recovery workers on Friday had to suspend for the second consecutive day their efforts to refloat the tanker. Part of the rear deck broke apart, making it impossible to fasten cables necessary to help pull the tanker to an upright position.

About 30 recovery workers and divers moved around the tanker on tugboats and cutters.

They discovered that the vessel--thought to be empty--still had about 3,000 gallons of diesel and bunker fuel, a heavy mixed fuel used by tour boats, in one of its holding tanks.

“This is an operation that could take days,” said Capt. Francisco Andrade, commander of the naval base on San Cristobal Island. “This is not a question of time but of patience.”

The tanker, which was carrying 234,000 gallons of fuel, did not immediately begin leaking when it ran aground.

“There was so much time. If the people at the Galapagos National Park, through their connections, had called, had cried out for international help . . . with the position the vessel was in, they could have been working to get the fuel off,” Arevalo said.

At least three criminal proceedings have been announced against Arevalo, his crew and an official from Petrocomercial, an affiliate of the state-owned oil company Petroecuador.

Arevalo and the Petrocomercial official were ordered held in custody until investigations are complete.

Diver Olimpo Arboleda said the recovery operation involved using high-pressure pumps to force air through a nearly 10-foot-long break in the hull to dislodge the vessel from the rocky sea floor.

Only one pelican and two sea gulls are known to have died in the spill. Still, dozens of other birds and wildlife--sea lions, blue-footed boobies and albatrosses--have been affected, Galapagos park officials said.

The islands, 600 miles west of the mainland, are Ecuador’s main tourist attraction.