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One more Selendang consideration: soybeans
SPILLED PRODUCT: Responders don't know how it will affect wildlife.

By JOEL GAY
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: December 18, 2004) 
Soybeans are floating through the water, accumulating on the bottom and 
piling up
knee-deep on beaches near the shipwrecked freighter Selendang Ayu, which broke
apart last week on Unalaska Island and began spilling its 66,000-ton load.
Photo gallery
Unalaska weather report

Biologists and cleanup experts are far more concerned about the thick, brown
bunker oil that has fouled the area's crystal waters and black-rock beaches. 
But
an Illinois soybean expert said things could get ugly when summer hits the
Aleutians.

"Enjoy it while you can" this winter, said Emerson Nafziger, a crop science
professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Once it does get
warm, it's going to smell to high heaven."

Soybeans have been the least of the problems arising from the Dec. 8 
grounding.
Six of the ship's crew were lost and are presumed dead when a Coast Guard 
rescue
helicopter crashed trying to lift them to safety. At least 40,000 gallons of 
oil
spilled when the ship broke in half. Salvage experts are racing time to remove
the remaining bunker oil and diesel -- as much as 400,000 gallons -- before 
winds
and waves dash the ship to pieces.

In the highly charged atmosphere of the spill response headquarters in 
Unalaska,
soybeans are an afterthought, said John Whitney, of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. "It's a nonproblem compared to the oil," he said.

Still, 66,000 tons is a big pile of soybeans, and spill responders aren't 
quite
sure what effect the beans will have on a remote Aleutian island and its 
birds,
marine mammals and shoreside creatures.

"This is a new one for us, that's for sure," said Anne Morkill of the Alaska
Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which includes the portion of Unalaska 
Island
where the ship went aground.

Soybeans, the quarter-inch-long yellow legumes brimming with oil and protein, 
are
the most valuable export crop for the United States, and China is the 
country's
biggest customer, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This year,
American farmers will sell some $7.5 billion worth of soybeans and another 
$1.4
billion in meal and oil.

Most of the beans will be ground into meal and used to feed fish, poultry and
livestock. Other uses include tofu, soy sauce and protein additives for
everything from bread to plastics and glue.

The Selendang Ayu had packed its seven cargo holds full before it sailed from
Tacoma on Nov. 28 for Xiamen, China. A full load for the Malaysian-flagged 
vessel
would settle during transit to some 2.4 million cubic feet, according to the
ship's managers, IMC Group.

That's enough soybeans to lay a strip four inches deep and four feet wide from
Anchorage to Fairbanks or to fill a caravan of 8,900 dump trucks. And when
soybeans get wet and swell, the volume can double or triple.

Still, the Illinois professor said, "Of all the things that could fall into 
the
water, soybeans are one of the more innocuous."

Never having thought about a soybean spill before, Nafziger couldn't offer
suggestions on what the beans may do. In fresh water, they sink, he said. "I'm
not sure about saltwater."

In Skan Bay, where the freighter lies in two pieces, soybeans poured out of 
the
broken hold and apparently sank. As water leaked into the remaining holds, 
white
foam -- apparently a by-product of the swelling beans -- trailed away from the
ship and its holds.

When spill responders finally got to the shore nearest the wreck, they found
soybeans piled 3 feet deep along a 100-yard stretch of beach.

Actually, they found soybean mush, said Dan Magone, the Dutch Harbor salvage
expert whose crews waded through it.

"It was knee deep," he said, but no longer beanlike. "It's already expanded 
and
puffed out," like oatmeal.

Magone, who has been anxious to start cleaning up the wreckage and whatever 
oil
it contains, said he isn't concerned about the soybean scum line around Skan 
Bay.
"It'll degrade in a hurry," he said.

Others suggest that, as organic material, the soybeans won't harm the 
environment.

Biologists are hoping that's true but want to analyze some of the material 
before
they call it harmless, said Morkill, deputy manager of the refuge.

"I think there are just a lot of questions about whether this is a good or a 
bad
thing," she said.

Among their questions is whether soybeans may absorb or attract oil and 
transport
it farther than the oil would normally travel. Soybean experts have said 
that's
unlikely because the beans release a substance that makes it almost impossible
for oil to stick.

The same experts have told spill responders that even if soybeans survive the
oil, the saltwater and the winter, they're not likely to sprout. And if they 
did,
they wouldn't survive the summer.

Kodiak gardening expert Marion Owen could have told them that. She tried to 
grow
them in the warmest corner of her porch. "I just love them," she said, but 
not to
feed cattle or hogs. She wanted to make the Japanese dish edamame, which 
requires
soybeans picked at the peak of ripening.

But no luck, she said. "They're just a fair-weather plant. Maybe in the
Interior," but not in Kodiak, and certainly not the Aleutians, Owen said.
"They're a no-go."

Perhaps a better question is whether other plants may sprout in the wake of 
the
spill. Soybean experts told the spill responders that 2 percent of a soybean
ship's cargo is wheat, weeds and other seeds, a total of more than 1,300 tons.

Biologists also wonder how animals will react if they eat the beans or the
resulting mush. So far, glaucous-winged gulls seem more interested in it than
other birds, Morkill said. Many seabirds are carnivores, subsisting largely on
small fish.

But the bird population in the spill area will soon grow, as other species 
return
for the summer, including threatened Steller's eiders and emperor geese.

"It's something we'll just have to keep our eye out for," she said.

Soybeans are known as a superb feed for livestock and fish, but that's after
processing. The raw beans are just the opposite, according to Nafziger,
containing what he called an "antinutritional factor." The protein is hard to
digest, he said.

If shorebirds ate the beans, "I don't think it would prove toxic, but it may 
not
really advance their cause much."

There is some concern that the beans could end up in a thick layer on the 
ocean
floor, said NOAA's Whitney. No one knows what effect the beans may have on 
crab
or bottom fish or how long it would take for the material to decompose, or
whether currents would wash the area clear.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing spill responders may not be experienced 
until
summer, Nafziger said. Rotting soybeans exude a powerful, unpleasant aroma, he
said. "If they're still there, it's going to stink."


 

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