The Nation - News from April 26, 1989

Radio messages recorded on the morning the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Alaska show that the ship’s captain spent up to an hour trying to rock the tanker free, which could have sunk the ship and spilled more oil, the Coast Guard said. The captain ignored Coast Guard warnings that trying to move the ship could have made the nation’s worst oil spill almost five times worse, the recordings show. The radio tapes were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Anchorage Daily News. The state also raised the estimate of the oil spilled from the tanker’s punctured tanks to 11.2 million gallons. Although some oil remains in the water, three hatcheries in Prince William Sound have begun releasing millions of tiny salmon because the annual bloom of plankton, an important food source, was at its peak.