A 1940s-era military tugboat is on the way to its final port of call after crews successfully removed it from the Delta near Stockton last week.

The Mazapeta sank Sept. 4 in Little Potato Slough near the former Herman and Helen’s Marina at the end of Eight Mile Road. It had approximately 1,600 gallons of diesel and engine oil, which was leaking heavily at first, but the holes were soon plugged and the spill contained by rubberized floating boom.

The city of Stockton coordinated with the Vallejo-based company Lind Marine, which barged the vessel to its drydock facility on Mare Island, where it will eventually be dismantled for salvage.

On Jan. 9, a 200-foot crane barge arrived and hovered over the vessel for more than a week while scuba divers drew lines beneath its hull. According to a statement from the U.S. Coast Guard, crews were able to seal, raise, dewater, and remove petroleum products from the vessel. Batteries and other household hazardous items were also removed.

A 200-foot crane hovers over the sunken World War II tugboat Mazapeta in Little Potato Slough as crews prepare to haul the sunken vessel out of the Delta. The U.S. Coast Guard said that workers were able to seal, raise, dewater, and remove petroleum products from the vessel. (CDFW Office of Spill Prevention and Response/Facebook)

“About 593 gallons of known product was removed and about 26,000 of oily water,” said Ryan Hanson of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

On Friday, a spokesperson for the department said there has been little to no impact on habitats in the area and no oiled wildlife has been spotted.

The Mazapeta was one of four vessels stuck at the site. It was attached to the Aurora, a 293-foot 1950s ocean liner that sits above water. Another ship is the Coast Guard Cutter Fir, a lighthouse tender built in 1939. The third ship remaining is a sunken Navy minesweeper, also tied to the Aurora.

“It has twice been addressed by Coast Guard, in 2019 and 2021,” said Hanson. “They have removed any known petroleum from any known tanks. The city of Stockton said they are going to potentially dismantle it in place using their own funds. The Coast Guard has said that the pollution has been mitigated.”

The operation involved a unified command that included the U.S. Coast Guard Sector San Francisco, California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Stockton.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.