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New strain of petroleum-gobbling bacteria found in old ferry The tentatively named pseudomonas Kalakala 98 microbe was found after the vessel’s bilge was cleaned with a known bacteria strain by The Associated Press
A campaign to salvage and restore an old art deco ferry appears to have yielded an unexpected result — a new strain of petroleum-gobbling bacteria.
The microbe already has captured the attention of cleanup experts for its potential in messes like the 11-million-gallon spill of crude oil when the Exxon Valdez ran aground 10 years ago near Valdez.
“I’d love to have been able to spray this in Prince William Sound,” said Paul Norem, vice president of Martin Environmental Technologies.
Terrie Trevillion, president of International Landmark Environmental in British Columbia, said the discovery could prove vital to her 24-year-old company’s work with biodegradable oil spill absorbents in the salty sands of Saudi Arabia.
New microbe could be a valuable find, says Trevillion “It is an absolute, marvelous, 100-percent breakthrough,” she said. “Most of these microbes are found in sweet water, like lakes. It’s very rare that you find a microbe that lives in a saline environment like this one does.”
The microbe, tentatively named pseudomonas Kalakala 98, was found after the vessel’s bilge had been cleaned using a previously known strain of bacteria.
The 276-foot ferry once carried passengers across Puget Sound between Seattle and Bremerton, Wash. Later, as a Black Ball Line vessel, the Kalakala criss-crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Port Angeles, Wash. and Victoria, British Columbia. On occasions it was the setting for moonlight dance cruises with a full band.
In 1967 the Kalakala was towed to Alaska for use as a fish processor, stuck in the mud on Kodiak Island and rusted into oblivion.
A Seattle sculptor, Peter Bevis, saw the once-elegant vessel while he was working on a long-line fishing boat in Kodiak in 1988 and began a campaign to return it to Seattle for restoration.
Once he had the means for towing it south, the harbormaster and Coast Guard insisted that the bilge be cleaned first.
Bevis got Martin Environmental to donate a bioremediation process. The best-known use of bioremediation was after the Exxon Valdez spill.
Growing more bacteria Under supervision of the Environmental Protection Agency, fertilizer was spread on 74 miles of Alaskan shoreline to stimulate the growth of oil-eating microbes.
In the case of the Kalakala, five gallons of bacteria concentrated in surfactant, a chemical which breaks down hydrocarbons, were applied to the bilge in Kodiak.
Within two weeks, the “super bugs” removed all the oil and other cruddy accretions from three decades in Kodiak, Bevis said.
“They followed the directions and they got a clean Kalakala,” Norem said.
The apparently new strain was found last fall after the boat was towed to Seattle.
It was unclear whether the strain had been lurking on the Kalakala, which is moored at Lake Union while fund raising for the restoration continues, or developed during or after bioremediation.
“It looks like all the other pseudonomas, a huge genus of bacteria, small round rods under the microscope,” said Harry Colvin, a Martin Environmental microbiologist.
Colvin is culturing the bacterium in various environments to see if it is stronger than other oil-eating bacteria that tolerate saltwater, cold and darkness.
Before the name can be official, Colvin said the bacterium must be reviewed in a formal process to determine if it is a new genus.
“We’re in the process of characterizing it and the next step is to see if the ones isolated from that particular sample can be grown for product,” he said.
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