As of Jan. 24, shoreline cleanup crews working near the site where the Selendang Ayu split in half had also collected more than 27,000 bags of oily solid wastes, said Len Marcus, public relations director for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Marcus spoke from the unified command headquarters at Unalaska, which is overseeing spill cleanup, including beaches at Skan Bay, Portage Bay and Humpback Bay.

Weather permitting, shoreline cleanup, water quality sampling and wildlife recovery operations have become part of daily operations for the unified command, which was established shortly after the spill in early December.

The unified command said in a briefing paper Jan. 23 that the total volume lightered from the freighter to date is 76,937 gallons of fuel oil/water and 2,647 gallons of diesel, for a total of 79,584 gallons of fuel oil, water and diesel.

As of Jan. 24, all seafood inspections at the Dutch Harbor and Akutan processing plants have concluded all products are free of oil contamination. Inspections are being conducted around the clock to check crab and pollock as they arrive at the docks, officials said.

Vessels from the opilio crab fishery in the Bering Sea continued their return to Dutch Harbor and Akutan to deliver their catch for processing. The unified command provided the crab fleet advisories to minimize contact with random tarballs that may be encountered during the vessel's return to port, officials said.

State fisheries officials said the opilio fishery, which concluded Jan. 20, was expected to meet the guideline harvest level of 19.4 million pounds. That is compared with a 2004 harvest of 22.2 million pounds.

The crab fleet left Dutch Harbor and Akutan on Jan. 13, and the fleet had not reported any incidents of contamination as of Jan. 24, officials said. An enhanced program to protect seafood quality was implemented. Shorelines were surveyed in Unalaska Bay and Captains Bay for tarballs and tar patties. Vessels are using crab pots and tow nets to detect submerged oil, Aerial surveys are checking for floating oil, and additional staff from the state's environmental health seafood program are inspecting seafood at Dutch Harbor and Akutan processing facilities.

The bairdi crab fishery in Unalaska Bay concluded Jan. 18 with an anticipated harvest of more than 35,000 pounds, state biologists said. To assure the safety of the catch in the aftermath of the oil spill, state environmental officials brought in additional inspectors, who said they found no evidence of the presence of oil in the catch.

The fate of many of the thousands of birds that are resident to the area and migrate through is still unknown.

On Jan. 22, the command's wildlife recovery team reported 72 additional bird carcasses and one dead oiled fox. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said a total of 967 dead birds have been recovered. Of the 29 live oiled birds captured and sent for rehabilitation, only 10 were later released. Seventeen birds died and two were euthanized. Five sea otter carcasses, including two skeletons have been recovered. Cause of death of the skeletal remains was unknown, officials said.

Rick Steiner, a professor with the University of Alaska's Marine Advisory Program, said satellite imagery of the spill area captured by DigitalGlobe of Longmont, Colo., and analyzed by Applied Analysis Inc., of Billerica, Mass., clarified the initial impact of the spill.

Cary Erdman, president of Applied Analysis, said his firm acquired the oil spill image from DigitalGlobe on behalf of Greenpeace.

The environmental organization paid for the image but did not have the funds for the analysis, which Applied Analysis donated, he said. Erdman said the image was from Dec. 13 and that there was more imagery available that his firm has not analyzed because of the cost of analysis, which runs to thousands of dollars.

"When I look at the imagery, it looks pretty clear that most of this (oil) stuff came out in the first week," Steiner said. "It seems a lot of the contamination came in the first five or six days (after the spill).

"The good side is we are done with the worst of it," Steiner said. "It's pretty certain that most of the fuel is already in the water. The bad side is that most of it went into the water in the first place. Once you have a freighter like this one on the beach, you've lost the battle, particularly on an exposed coastline in winter."

Steiner said that in the aftermath of the spill, a shipping safety partnership has been formed, including commercial fishermen, Alaska Native groups and non-government organizations in Alaska and nationwide. Their goal is to forward proposals to state, federal government and industry officials to improve the safety of shipping, particularly on the Great Circle route, he said.