State officials say tar balls and oil that washed on to Pacifica beaches recently have been identified as coming from a shipwreck that divers are currently trying to drain of thousands more gallons of oil to prevent further spills.
Robert Hughes of the state's Office of Spill Response and Prevention said preliminary tests indicated the oil and tar ball spill that coated two miles of beach at the end of June came from the SS Jacob Luckenbach, a freight ship that sank 17 miles southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1953. State officials had found 92 sea birds killed by that spill as of Monday evening and taken 41 in for treatment, of which another 13 died or were euthanized.
The Luckenbach is believed to have been the source of repeated mysterious oil spills that have hit the coast between Point Reyes and Monterey Bay over the past decade or more, including a major one this winter believed to have killed thousands of birds, most of them common murres.
An unusual $3.5 million cleanup operation launched by the Coast Guard at the end of May is attempting to suck out enough of the nearly 10,000 gallons of oil remaining in its tanks and holds to prevent further spills, but work was slowed through June by unseasonably heavy seas.
Conditions have improved, but the deep sea divers doing the work can only stay in their pressurized underwater
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