Video: Bulker Strikes Fish Farm off Turkey

bulker fish farm — Heba M's trackline on approach to the casualty location (Courtesy Pole Star)

[Brief] On Thursday morning, a 6,900 dwt bulker transited through a fish farm off the coast of Turkey, striking several pens and releasing more than one million fish into the sea.

The 1995-built Heba M encountered the fish farm at a position north of Küçük Tav?an Adas? (Little Rabbit Island) in the Güllük Gulf, north of the Bodrum Peninsula. The vessel was reportedly arriving in the bay in order to pick up a cargo of feldspar ore when it ran through three fish pens, releasing an estimated one million sea bream (each weighing about one pound) into the ocean.

Video taken by responders suggests that the vessel's propellers and rudders were fouled by the pen's net structure. On Friday, the vessel relocated to a nearby sheltered anchorage, according to AIS data provided by Pole Star.

The Turkish Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the incident.