Ocean Research Vessel Used to Monitor Marine Debris Sinks in Oakland Estuary

For a vessel that’s spent decades cleaning up trash in the ocean, this is perhaps the cruelest of fates.

The Kaisei, a large double-masted sailing ship whose mission has long been to raise awareness about the ever-mounting volume of marine garbage and the ecological threat it poses, is now the latest large piece of debris needing to be pulled from the water after it sank into the Oakland Estuary over the weekend.

The 99-foot sailing ship, which had been docked in Alameda behind the Nob Hill Foods grocery store, near the Park Street Bridge, began sinking into the murky waters on Sunday evening for reasons that are still unknown, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Nobody was on board.

“The Coast Guard received a report (at 6:14 p.m.) from the Alameda police dispatch of a vessel that was taking on water and sinking quickly near the public dock,” said Ensign John Thompson, a spokesperson for the agency. “We do not know about the cause.”

Within hours, the Alameda Fire Department posted on the social media platform X that its fireboat crew had deployed a floating boom to prevent the spread of leaked oil from the ship and was working to protect surrounding vessels.

As of Monday night, only the ship’s masts and part of its hull were still visible above water.

“The truth is, we don’t know a whole lot,” said Ryan Yerkey, chief of operations at Ocean Voyages Institute, the Sausalito-based sailing education and environmental nonprofit that owns the ship.

Yerkey said his organization was contacted by a Coast Guard official on Sunday who reported that the Kaisei was likely struck by a large object in the water and sank fast.

“There had been people on board the boat the day before and that morning, so we know it was just a really quick, unfortunate tragedy,” he said. “We don’t know what hit it, but it was super high tide and the water moves very quickly through the channel, with all sorts of debris, logs, trees, things like that. So something came through, smacked into it and made a hole, is what it sounds like.”

A steel-hulled brigantine built in Poland in 1987, the Kaisei — which means “Sea Star” or “Ocean Planet” in Japanese — is a replica of the galleons of yore, serving for years as a sailing training vessel in Japan.

Since acquiring the ship around 2001, Ocean Voyages has taken it on three separate expeditions in 2009, 2011 and 2012 to monitor and report on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In that vast and growing vortex of trash, located in the North Pacific Gyre between Hawaii and California, clockwise currents collect an unusually large amount of human-produced, mostly plastic, debris.

While the exact size of the loose accumulation of the garbage patch is unknown, some estimates put it as high as 617,000 square miles, about twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France. By one calculation, it would take 67 ships one year to clean up just 1% of that entire area, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

All three of the ship’s voyages to the garbage patch have been geared toward scientific sampling and data collection to identify the specific types of marine debris — including floating plastics, microplastics and ghost nets — and develop possible solutions for removing it, according to the organization.

Ocean Voyages is working with the Coast Guard and local agencies to recover the Kaisei, and has hired a team to monitor it 24 hours a day for any oil leaks, Yerkely said. The ship has about 400 gallons of diesel fuel on board, which divers will try to empty out Tuesday, he added, noting that only a minimal amount of oil has so far been known to have leaked into the water.

“We’re doing everything that can be done, and we’re on top of it,” he said. “And luckily, everybody has been so supportive and so helpful, and been able to make a tragic situation as good as possible.”

Once all environmental concerns are addressed, Yerkey added, the organization will begin figuring out how to salvage the vessel. He noted that, although unfortunate, this kind of incident is not all that unusual.

“There’s a bunch of boats that are currently sunk in the Bay Area that I guess nobody reports on,” he said. “It’s something that unfortunately happens. And it’s not through lack of diligence or whatever. Unfortunate situations happen that are outside of our control.”

While the sinking of a ship of this size is uncommon, smaller vessels in the Bay Area “sink all the time,” noted Thompson, from the Coast Guard.

“I would say that on average, the sector responds to anywhere from two to five calls a week for a vessel taking on water or a vessel sinking,” he said.