Carl Nolte, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle August 27, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Friday, August 27, 2010
Scientists are studying sonar images of a shipwreck loaded with 3.5 million gallons of crude oil in the holds of a tanker that lies 4 miles off the scenic Central California coast like a rusting time bomb.
The American tanker Montebello was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine Dec. 23, 1941, only 16 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and sank in 900 feet of water. The Montebello has lain on the bottom ever since.
Japanese submarine attacks on ships off California's coast caused a near panic in those dark days of World War II when the West Coast was thought to be nearly undefended.
The surprise today is that a wartime shipwreck can still cause concern, nearly 70 years later.
Earlier this month, a robot submarine from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute dove down to the wreck to find answers to two major questions: Is the oil still aboard the Montebello, and if it is, will the oil eventually seep to the surface and cause a major environmental threat?
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