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Maritime firm Sea Mark Management Inc. paid a $10,400 fine last week to Oregon Department of Environmental Quality for a oil spill that occurred in March.

The penalty resulted from a class 1 violation, which DEQ Environmental Law Specialist Esther Westbrook said is the most serious in the DEQ’s scheme. About 125 gallons of bunker oil spilled into the Willamette River Due to the negligence of a tankerman, according to findings by the U.S. Coast Guard and the DEQ.

The incident occurred in the early afternoon on March 18 when the 590-foot-long Trancenden Time was receiving fuel from an Olympic Tug & Barge vessel. Regulations require each ship to supply a tankerman during the fueling process, explained Ray Hoy, DEQ state on-scene coordinator.

鈥淭he Trancenden Time tankerman asked to pick up the rate, and before too long fuel started spurting out of air vents that go to the tank. The vents are on the ship’s platform level, and so it basically spewed out onto the deck and then shortly thereafter rolled over the deck, down the side of the vessel, and into the water,鈥� Hoy said.

In total, 930 gallons of bunker oil was spilled, but most of it was caught on the deck. West Coast Marine Cleaning, a spill response contractor, was on site and able to deploy both hard and absorbent boom relatively quickly.

Some oil did escape the boom during the initial part of the spill, which the current then pulled across the channel to the west bank of the Willamette. Approximately 400 meters of the beach were damaged by the escaped oil, according to Hoy.

鈥淭he majority of the clean up was done by the Clean Rivers Cooperative,鈥� Hoy said. 鈥淭hey spent a good deal of effort cleaning up the beach for about a week. Fortunately, we didn’t see any signs of wildlife damage 鈥� no oiled birds or dead fish or anything like that.鈥�