FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE			November 29, 1996


Contact:	John Robinson  (831) 647-4237 or 4201

Oil Filled Tanker Found On 
Sea Floor Near Sanctuary  


An oil tanker, sunk by a Japanese submarine off the  southern Big Sur 
coast  in 1941, has been found - apparently still filled with crude oil - 
resting on the sea floor in 900 feet of water adjacent to the  Monterey 
Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

The 440-foot tanker, the Montebello, was located by a team of 
marine researchers who surveyed and filmed the wreck in a small 
two-person submarine earlier this month. The ghostly vessel is 
sitting upright, teeming with sealife, and littered with webs of 
snagged fishing lines and nets, some of which billow above the ship  

According to researchers, two of the Montebelloęs 10 onboard 
storage tanks were  ruptured at the time of the sinking. The 
remaining eight tanks appear undamaged and may hold thousands 
of barrels of heavy crude oil.

Although the ship has been submerged for 55 years, the tankeręs 
overall condition appears quite good - considering the circumstances 
-  with little sign of hull deterioration. No leakage from the 
remaining storage tanks was observed. 

–We are very concerned,” said Terry Jackson, manager of the 
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. –This is a large amount 
of oil sitting in an aging tanker on the bottom of the sea.
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 Should it rupture, it could cause a major oil spill. But due to the 
extreme depth of  water it was found in, it will be very difficult to 
attempt any salvage or removal of the oil.”

The Montebello was built in 1921 in San Pedro and was owned by 
Union Oil Co., making West Coast and trans-Pacific crossings with 
cargoes of crude and refined oil products. 

On Dec.  23, 1941, just 16 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor,  the 
Montebello  was loaded with 75,346 barrels (4.1 million gallons) of 
crude oil at Port San Luis near Pismo Beach.  It set sail at 1:20 a.m. 
for Vancouver, British Columbia. 

At  about 5:45 a.m.  the tanker was a few miles off Cambria when a 
lookout on the bridge spotted an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine 
surfacing about 100 yards away.  The Montebello, whose top speed 
was 11 knots, tried to outrun the submarine but was unable to. 

At 5:55 a.m. a torpedo slammed into the tankeręs bow, hitting the one 
empty storage tank, according to crew members.  The submarine 
continued to shell the tanker with a deck gun as the 38-member crew 
scrambled into lifeboats. 

The Montebello sank a short time later, plunging bow first into the 
bottom and settling squarely on its keel  nearly 1,000 feet below. All of 
the crew made it safely to shore, many being rescued by two Chevron  
Oil Co. tugboats, the Alma and Cayucos which steamed through 
heavy seas to aid the stricken tanker.   

Although the  general location of the sinking had been known - and 
fishermen had marked where they lost nets and rigging on a 
submerged object - it had never been precisely located or examined.

The expedition to the shipęs final resting place was led by 
archeologist Jack Hunter , and organized by the Central Coast 
Maritime Museum Association. Funding was provided by the 
Monterey Bay  National Marine Sanctuary and the National 
Undersea Research Center, both of which are programs of the 
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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The expedition left from Santa Barbara Nov. 6 aboard a Delta 
Oceanographics research ship with carried the Delta, a 16-foot 
submarine which has previously been used to explore the shipwrecks 
of the Lusitania in the Atlantic Ocean and the Edmund Fitzgerald in 
Lake Superior, among others. 

The team members included Roy Pettus of Geoarch Consultants, 
Stacey Kim of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, Robert 
Schwemmer and Patrick Smith of the Los Angles Maritime Museum 
Research Society, John Ljubenkov of Marine Ecological Consultants, 
and Steven Maddex, Robert Pavlik and Fred Novy, all of the Central 
Coast Maritime Museum Association. 

After arriving at the rough coordinates of the Montebello, the 
submarine was launched and quickly  guided to the wreck  by echo 
sounders aboard the mother ship. 

As  they approached, the dark bulk of the Montebello took shape in 
small sections of illumination, as the submarineęs searchlights could 
only penetrate about 30 feet in the murky water. 

The lights reveled a tangle of  rigging and sealife covering nearly all 
surfaces of the corroding steel ship.  Carpets of white anemones 
clung to gangways, while crabs scuttled about the deck and hung 
from webs of fishing line like spiders, and schools of fish swam by. 

–It was like the blind men describing an elephant,” said Hunter, who 
was on the initial dive. –All the fragile parts of the ship were crushed, 
such as the smokestacks which were made of thin metal. But we 
could see there were no holes in the deck  and we inspected the hull 
very closely.”

A total of four, two-hour dives were made, with the submarine 
crews being very careful to avoid becoming entangled in the rigging 
and lines draped about the ship. 

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Detailed reports of the investigation are going to the various 
federal, state and local agencies involved in oil spill response and 
ocean protection.  

 –Any attempt at salvage would be extremely costly,” Jackson said. 
–We will have to evaluate the condition of the ship, the threat of a 
spill and what our options are.”

The threat of a spill depends partially upon what type of petroleum 
product the tanker was laden with.  Due to the cold temperature of 
the sea at 900 feet, heavy crude oil would become very dense and 
flow slowly, if at all,  from any hull breech. A lighter crude, or refined 
product, however, would surface much more quickly and pose a 
greater threat. 

The cold water also slows down the corrosion process, although the 
sea will eventually  eat through the hull of the Montebello. 

The Montebello may also be eligible  for the National Register of 
Historic Places as a significant  historical resource associated with 
the West Coast and the United States entry into World War II. 

Video tape of the Montebello taken from the Delta submarine is 
available, after 11 a.m. Friday at the Monterey Bay National Marine 
Sanctuary office in Monterey. 

Additional contacts will be provided.

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