MV Selendang Ayu

The selendang Ayu was a running under Malaysian flag freighter. The 225 m long and 32 m wide vessel was built in 1998 at the Shanghai Hudong shipyard in the People's Republic of China. It ran on 8 December 2004 by 18 clock local time in front of the Aleutian island of Unalaska aground and broke apart an hour later. A storm with wind force 9 and up to 7 m high waves made ​​it difficult to rescue the crew and made a containment of the emerging oil impossible. The crash of a helicopter already rescued six crew members died. In addition to soybeans, the freighter had about 1,600 tons of heavy fuel oil and about 69.3 tonnes of marine diesel on board.

On January 5, 2005, to begin with the pumping of the oil. Approximately 160 tons of heavy fuel oil immediately ran into the Bering Sea, and the content of a front oil tank, 176,000 gallons ( about 700 tons ), according to the Ministry of Environment of Alaska also likely.

The immediately visible damage in the animal world were initially low: 300 dead seabirds, three dead sea otters and several kilometers of contaminated beach in Skan Bay. Apparently, the oil was expelled from the coasts, but because of the cold climate, it was considered years of risk for the region.

Parts of the North Pacific and the Bering Sea are nature reserves of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, a habitat for endangered seabirds, sea lions, seals, sea otters and walruses. Only in 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran aground and was far from a disaster had caused with irreversible consequences.