DREDGER BRINGS UP MORE THAN SILT.

Byline: Mary Lane Associated Press 

With its ability to suck up tons of silt and water from the bottom of the bay, the Hopper Dredge Yaquina is the ultimate mud-pie maker.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers vessel has been dredging from the bottom of Humboldt Bay all this month as part of its annual assignment to clear shipping channels from Samoa to Fields Landing, dumping the muck about 3 miles out to sea.

But it's not just mud that comes through the 200-foot ship's two 15-ton vacuum pipes, crew members said Wednesday morning.

``Digging along the dock, the biggest problem we have is picking up garbage everybody's thrown out - old tires, engine blocks, sails, wires,'' Yaquina executive officer James Holcroft said as the two drag-arms pulled tons of silt into the ship's 825-cubic-yard hopper.

Later, second mate Bill Averill had to untangle several discarded cables that had stuck to one of the ship's dragheads. Once while dredging the Columbia River near Portland, Ore., Yaquina crews found a human skull along with the rest of the muck, Averill said.

``We thought it was Jimmy Hoffa, but there was no cement on it,'' he joked. The crew handed the skull over to Portland authorities.

But the giant vacuum equipment rarely sucks up any living creatures, Capt. Miguel Jimenez said. The ship creates such an underwater racket - between the noise and the vibration - that anything that can move is far away by the time the giant sucking machines arrive, he said.

``If we do pick up anything, it's usually dead or it's on its way out anyway,'' Jimenez said.

As the solid material sinks to the bottom of the hold, the water overflows through the top, kicking up a cloud of muddy water around the ship. In waterways like Humboldt Bay, lined with light silt, much of the bottom material ends up going over the side with the water, Holcroft said, but it gets carried away by the current.

The 23-member Yaquina crew works in shifts to dredge 24 hours a day. Humboldt Bay is generally the first stop in their 180-day season - they'll later work in bays and rivers along the Oregon and Washington coasts.

And the Yaquina isn't used for just dredging. The ship was dispatched to Prince William Sound in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. Instead of sucking muck off the bottom, however, the ship's dragheads were turned upside down to pull oil down from the surface after it had been collected by booms.

Coming into Humboldt Bay every April can often be a hair-raising experience, crew members say. Last year while crossing the turbulent Humboldt Entrance Bar, a wave hit the ship so hard the mast broke and fell into the radar system. Pictures of the incident still decorate the galley.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) The 200-foot dredging ship Yaquina looms larg e over local fishing vessels as it approaches the dock in Eureka.

(2) Second mate Bill Averill removes cable with a sledgehammer from one of Yaquina's dredge heads.

Associated Press