Coast Guard officers responding to an oil sheen in Kitio Bay off Afognak Island say containment boom is in place and the leaking underground transfer line at the Kitoi Bay Hatchery that caused the spill has been replaced.
Seven hundred feet of containment boom was in place, plus an additional 300 feet of secondary containment boom to absorb the sheen from discharges from the leaking transfer line. Staff at the hatchery, which is owed by the Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association, took all the right measures and are doing the cleanup themselves, the Coast Guard said.
Coast Guard Sector Anchorage Incident Management Division and Marine Safety Detachment Kodiak said the command center received a spill report at 4 p.m. Nov. 22 from hatchery officials.
A pollution response crew, funded with $15,000 from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, was on scene on Nov. 23, the Coast Guard said.
Coast Guard officials said their focus was to assess the situation and provide guidance for effective pollution response.
The Kitoi Bay Hatchery is on the west side of Izhut Bay, some 30 miles north of the city of Kodiak.
The hatchery was constructed in 1954 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, destroyed by the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake and rebuilt in 1965 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The hatchery’s priority is pink salmon fisheries enhancement.
