PORT ANGELES — For the second day in a row, Coast Guard officials reported no oil sheen in the area where a boat sank in the Olympic National Marine Sanctuary.
All five crew members were rescued Thursday when the 80-foot vessel they were fishing on, Vicious Fisher, sank in as much as 400 feet of water about 13 miles off LaPush.
Saturday flyover
A three-mile sheen — beginning one to two miles from where the boat went down and extending northwest — was seen during a Coast Guard flyover Saturday.
Subsequent flyovers Monday and Tuesday revealed no sheen.
Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound spokesman Christopher Clark said a Coast Guard crew flew 1,000 to 2,000 feet above the ocean Tuesday.
“They had great weather and great visibility,” Clark said.
“They found nothing.”
The Coast Guard does not plan to fly over the area today.
The vessel out of Bellingham had 3,800 gallons of diesel onboard when it sank.
Coast Guard crews from LaPush and Port Angeles safely rescued the crew members.
The Coast Guard later said the boat was too deep to be recovered.
Liam Antrim, resource protection specialist with the sanctuary, told the Peninsula Daily News on Saturday that diesel floating on the surface of the water puts sea birds and mammals at risk.
Visibility
In a Tuesday e-mail, he cautioned that high winds and rough seas Monday would have made the observation of diesel surfacing in the ocean nearly impossible.
The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary extends from the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to northern Grays Harbor County and into the Pacific by as many as 50 miles.
