ALICIA ZORZETTO: My name's Alicia Zorzetto from the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council.

I'm here today. It's December 17th, 2013 and I'm interviewing Bob Linville.

We're in Seward. I should mention we're at the Public Library in Seward, Alaska.

Bob, to start off would you mind telling me where you were during the spill and what you were doing?

BOB LINVILLE: Well, I was in Seward when it happened, but my story really has to kind of start a little bit before that.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Sure.

BOB LINVILLE: We basically moved to Seward, in town, in 1981.

We bought our little homestead there at Driftwood Bay, which is about seventeen air miles from Seward and about twenty-three boat miles.

It's a remote piece of property on -- near Driftwood Bay. And we bought that 1978.

We got it paid off and we moved there and lived there for three years from 1982 to ’85.

And so that was before I ever even started commercial fishing.

In 1986 -- in ’85 I actually seined on deck, and then in ’86 I started drifting over in Cordova and the western Sound .

And we really loved that life and we just, you know, we were really happy where we were and what we were doing.

We had our first child in 1985 and so then we moved back into town basically to try to provide the family.

And we had two more kids in 1987 and 1989 and my -- my youngest son he was born in February 27, 1989.

So he was a newborn when the spill happened.

And we were living here in town at the time, but we never did -- we were spending a good portion of our year every year even when we did live in town when I wasn’t working --

Patty wasn’t working we were at Driftwood Bay.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Was Patty fishing at this time, too?

BOB LINVILLE: No, Patty, she was just a mother and housewife. We weren’t together. You know, we went to Cordova when we were fishing over there.

Back in those days she was here in Seward while I was fishing out in Western Sound. She came out and we set up a camp a few times in the Sound.

So what happened in the year prior to the oil spill was because I did drift over there I realized --

I -- I kind of was admiring this lifestyle of the setnet families that setnetted in Prince William Sound in the Eshamy District and really wanted to try to find an opportunity to do that because it's such a wonderful family thing to do.

And in 1988 it was a really big year -- fishing year -- really an anomaly in a fishing economy, and all the permits just skyrocketed.

Everything -- everything to do with fishing statewide just went through the roof.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: As far as like prices for --

BOB LINVILLE: So it never really affected those of us who weren’t already in were trying to buy anything.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: So what kind of stuff would you buy, like for --

BOB LINVILLE: Well, really, you know, from -- I'm -- I think it's the same all over the state. But permits and boats are the two things I'm talking about.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: When we talk about having to purchase that, can you give an idea of what that might cost, you know, and for you?

BOB LINVILLE: Well, the seine permits were over $300,000 and this is in 19 -- the winter -- ALICIA ZORZETTO: ’88?

BOB LINVILLE: Of 1988 -- ’89. ALICIA ZORZETTO: A lot.

BOB LINVILLE: It's a -- in ’89, ’90, too.

I mean, it really crashed the winter after the oil spill.

It began its long decline. It did crash.

It was a long decline, but seine boats are still just very expensive for the young fisherman to try to somehow over time be able to get himself established. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And when permits were just a piece of plastic you needed to fish, it cost another $300,000.

I mean it was good fishing then so there was incentive to try to make this happen.

And I had lots of friends that did, and they were in huge debt trying to get into this fishery.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Yeah.

BOB LINVILLE: We really weren’t -- we - we -- we had debt a little bit on the drift fishery, but I was partners with my brother Dick

and so I didn’t -- I wasn’t even a full owner of that. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And we were trying -- we really didn’t have much money.

We were trying to get the setnet operation

and I wouldn’t have been able to, except for the one that was for sale that winter was one of our neighbors here in Seward that I’ve -- I’ve worked with all my --

I work construction, too, and I've worked with him on lots of jobs locally and I really liked him. He was on the school board and just a really good guy and he --

he was motivated to try to see if he could help us get this thing, but, you know, the price was more than double what the last one was.

And it was not -- we thought we might be able to get the money, but we weren’t able to. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And he just -- we wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t for Mike -- Mike Wiley. He was -- he helped -- he just carried us all winter while we tried everything we could try, you know.

He knew he could sell it in a flash for cash. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: If he wanted to any time he wanted. He gave us 30 days and we didn't manage that and he wound up giving -- we wound up more than four months.

We made a deal in the beginning of October and we were established fishermen so the state would loan us what they considered to be the value of the permit. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Which then was -- the highest one had ever sold for was fifty grand and we -- we made a deal with Mike for a hundred ten.

And so they were willing to, you know, that's what the state does, they help young people get in. They use the permit for collateral so they were willing to do that.

So we had to borrow the rest of it. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: And that’s where the problem was. We could get part of it at one place and part of it at another,

but we couldn’t get the two to talk to each other and neither one would agree to do it without the other one.

And we didn’t even find these two places.

We tried every lending authority and institution basically from Seattle north.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: So just to get the -- BOB LINVILLE: Then we finally -- ALICIA ZORZETTO: -- loan is the --

BOB LINVILLE: Just to get the loan to buy the seine. And we had the deal, you know, with Mike. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: So as it turns out we finally got the two talking to each other after trying all winter long.

And the day of the closing was March 24, 1989.

And I want to kind of start my oil spill discussion with the fact that there were earlier spills that winter. This wasn’t the only one.

If you look at the record, you’ll see that. I -- I don’t even remember them all because --

But it was kind of scary that they weren’t -- their operations were letting this happen repeatedly. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: And one was fairly large, you know, it would be a huge deal in the world we live in today.

No oil got outside of Valdez Arm or anything. It wasn’t that big, but if that oil hit the water now that would be a huge story.

It would -- it just wasn’t enough to kill a bunch of birds and leave a huge, you know, sheen all over the bay. The oil was still --

And I don’t know the details, but I believe it was not that long before the big one. It was, you know, a few thousand gallons of oil on the water.

And this was -- so what -- what’s happening here is they have totally -- in 1977 they -- they laid out or 19 -- when they started -- basically when the state -- when the legislation was passed to allow the pipeline to be built.

In order for that to happen, the oil industry agreed to certain standards they were going to keep to clean up spills.

And that’s the -- the framework we went into the whole oil era in Alaska with.

The oil started flowing in 1977. In 1989 -- by 1989 it dismantled that --

that whole oil spill response, basically the capability that they had agreed to do before the pipeline was approved.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: And it was the oil companies that did it you say?

BOB LINVILLE: Yeah -- yeah, I mean it was Alyeska Pipeline Services really they were -- there's really no difference between them and the oil companies. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: And so their -- they had two earlier spills and I -- I’m sure -- I’m not sure what the response plan was for those two or what they actually did have available.

But, when the big one happened the major barge they had with cleanup equipment was on the beach buried in snow.

So I’m -- I'm sure this has been well -- well stated in the past. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: I don’t know any more about it than that, but it took them a good few days just to get it in the water --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: And didn't --

BOB LINVILLE: And was buried in snow in March in Valdez, we’re talking --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: A lot of snow.

BOB LINVILLE: It’s a huge operation -- ALICIA ZORZETTO: Yeah.

BOB LINVILLE: Just getting that thing --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: And didn't they originally promise, was it six hours or three hours?

BOB LINVILLE: Yeah, I don’t know, but that’s really -- really established that response. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Yeah.

BOB LINVILLE: So that’s the state of affairs with the oil industry from the start of the agreement to what they were going to do for oil spill response to the start of the flow of oil

and I think most of that was probably being done. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: To when -- about twelve years later when they had a huge spill and they'd had several warnings in advance that they better get their equipment ready. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Cause this has happened.

And personally we'd been working on getting these banks to talk to each other and try to get our financing all winter long.

And my wife was -- I can’t remember Patty -- yeah, that’s right that spring she was -- filled a contract.

She was a teacher in elementary school and in Moose Pass there was a teacher that had to leave for half a year, and so she took that temporary contract.

So she was -- she had, I think, she didn’t start that until quite a while after Bobby was born on February 27th.

She may or may not have been doing that when the oil spill happened, I can't remember.

She was up there quite a bit. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: In that time frame. We took the day off. We got up early because we had to go to Anchorage for these appointments.

And I heard on the radio, you know, as soon as I got up, about this spill.

And I'd already heard several before, but when I heard the amount it was 211,000 barrels or something like that or over 200,000 barrels, and, I mean, it was just like I had no doubt what it really was.

I knew we weren’t going to be fishing probably at all and I -- I ---

I mean nobody can really envision what it really is, but I mean it’s such a huge amount of oil it's just going to be devastating.

But we went ahead and did it, because we just wanted to -- we wanted to do this bad enough and we were going to go for it anyway.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: For the loan?

BOB LINVILLE: Yeah, for the loan and close the deal. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Okay.

BOB LINVILLE: So we went up and we met with the state at their offices and we met with Farm Credit who had an old man at Palmer that was their offices at the time.

And neither one of those two really got the gravity of the situation at that point, you know. I mean they knew --

everybody knew about it, but they just didn’t really see that -- how serious this really was.

I mean it took a while for the public to realize this is just massive.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: You know, but we -- we did that. We got the money to Mike, and -- and, you know, we owned it. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Okay.

BOB LINVILLE: And meanwhile we had our place at Driftwood and the oil -- they had three days. I mean we were just spellbound.

I don’t think we were the only ones.

I mean it was just the whole front page of the paper and most of the first section for weeks and months after the spill.

It was the biggest thing that I’ve seen in my history since the earthquake, I think, in Alaska.

And I haven’t seen anything since that even comes close.

You know I wasn’t here during the earthquake so -- I was only 12 years old then. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: But we were all pretty, you know, pretty interested in what this was really like and Seward was no exception.

I mean, just -- you didn’t have to be a commercial fisherman, you know. Just everybody was scared and worried.

So there was a -- I called the air service here because I wanted to -- I knew there was people flying out of here to check it out,

and I wanted to get on one of those planes.

(Inaudible) was allowed to and we took off, and this was probably five or six days after the spill. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And the first three days were just beautiful.

You know, they could've -- if they would've had a cleanup capability they seriously could have removed oil from water, I mean, without dispersants. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: They had calm weather and they were lost.

They didn’t really get anything done during that time.

And after that there was a big storm, and that’s kind of the end of the easy cleanup -- ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right. BOB LINVILLE: -- right there.

By the time that storm ended I think the oil was already on -- pretty much along Knight Island and the east side and it was way to the west of the Sound. It just blew across.

We flew over pretty much the day after that and I -- I think the storm lasted a couple days so we were there five or six days around that.

And the first thing I remember we flew over our setnet location, because that's just the way you go from here pretty much. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And there was -- there was already people hired to go out there and get a grip on it anyway.

We saw boats -- they weren’t really doing much, but they were -- they were already mobilized. This is, you know, I have to say they tried to hire the fishing fleet pretty early on.

You know, and try to get people in position to do something, you know.

There were -- there were some boats out there in the Eshamy District already

And when you fly over that about somewhere past that before you get to Knight Island you just hit this wall of fumes, you know,

and just the volatile compounds coming off all that oil. And it just really it was almost difficult to breathe.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: And you’re -- you’re flying?

BOB LINVILLE: Yeah, we were flying. We were probably, you know, I don’t know a thousand, two thousand feet up.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Wow.

BOB LINVILLE: It just really powerful.

And the oil you could just see, you know, see all of it. It was still a massive leading edge.

And then we flew over it. And once you flew over that it was kind of -- flew out of the -- the major vapors, I mean, there was still vapors all the way over the tanker.

I think there was still oil coming out of the tanker, but -- ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: -- not the massive amount of oil that came out all at once and began --

when that tanker just emptied out what it could, it later on it just leaked, you know, probably huge amounts but not anything like the initial few days.

We flew over the tanker and looked over that, and it really wasn’t a whole lot going on there at that time. Then flew back to Seward.

And at that point I didn’t go back to the actual scene until I mean and once in the Sound I went back to the Main Bay where our setnet operation was until I was headed to go drifting -- I was drifting -- drift --

The gillnet salmon fishery opened and basically fished all season that year.

Nothing east of the Valdez Arm was actually oiled, but the oil all went west. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: So the Copper River Flats actually had a pretty good season and the prices really good.

So I did go back in, I think, May 5th or something I went over there to Cordova and I stopped in Main Bay to look at all the -- this is just --

I want to try to separate these stories on my part, and so I’m trying to talking about my -- my fishing business first. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Okay.

BOB LINVILLE: So I had a little 27 foot bowpicker called the Coyote.

And I was by myself and I left Seward as I did every year.

This is the first time I’d owned setnet operation and I had not built a camp, but we knew where our camp -- what beach it was going to be on.

And we knew where I sites were and that’s why we knew where our camp was going to be because you don’t want to be any further from your sites if you don’t have to be. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Sometimes you have to be.

So we went to that location. And I went there, and there was two seiners in the bay, really in Main Bay. I don’t remember what they were really tasked with at the time, but they did have boom across the front of the hatchery,

And I think they were maintaining the boom.

So this is like two weeks after the spill

And the hatchery was at the head of Main Bay. It's about two miles from the mouth of Main Bay -- two or three.

And they tried to put the boom across the whole bay and they couldn’t do it and so they tried several other places and they finally succeeded right just a little bite just in front of the hatchery.

And now they have big huge moored buoys that with, you know, oil spill response equipment in connexes, so they can just close that right off. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Without that, it's very difficult to hold anything against the tide.

They finally got some, but only the tiny little bite it had, and so those seiners were in charge of that.

There -- there really still wasn’t any kind of beach cleanup or anything going on and, I mean, none of that had been really --

they had two weeks out they didn’t -- I think they were just trying to finally kind of thinking about it at that point.

But I went to my beach where our camp was and it had literally over a foot of mousse on it,

because we were on the outer part of Main Bay so the oil, you know, it has a hard time pushing up these fjords and inlets as much as it does on the outside coast. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Where the -- it just comes in and there's just nothing to stop it. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: There further, you know, some of them -- like there's so much oil it gets super deep.

I mean it's just -- like on the east side Knight Island the oil was just so thick, you know, is where they're positioned, but in Main Bay it -- the further you went in the less of it there was, you know.

I think it made it all the way. It might have made it,

but on the outer edge of it I mean it was really hit hard.

And my beach was just a, you know, fairly rough and the waves were just coming in -- just pushing the --

I mean the oil had -- the leading edge had come and gone there wasn’t that much more oil coming from the tanker.

It was mainly just oil that was coming off the beach, on the beach and it was just --

I mean you stick your hand in that stuff and it's just like axle grease.

I mean, it's grease is what it is.

It's just -- you can’t get it off. It's just the ugliest stinkiest mess you could possibly believe.

And that's what we had on our beach.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: What were your feelings like when you saw that?

BOB LINVILLE: Well, I was ready for it, you know. I knew what I was going to see.

You know it's just like this whole time period from the time it happened until it never really stopped, you know.

It was just absolute dis -- you know, I don’t even know how to describe it. Horrible. ALICIA ZORZETTO: I know.

BOB LINVILLE: I just -- I mean it -- it hit us in every aspect of what we were here to live -- to do.

Because we also had our place at Driftwood and it stands out at the end of a peninsula and you just have this catcher’s mitt so anything coming from the east goes it, you know, it just stops it, you know.

It's just like -- there's several of these up and down this stretch of coast and they all got hit. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: You know, the cove inside of Gore Point's another one.

Anyway, so I just looked at it. I didn’t even -- I went in there with my dinghy and just --

I wanted to get a handful of it just to feel it, you know, and I did that.

I went back out and parked at those seiners and talked to those guys for a while.

We drove up and looked at the boom, and came back and then there really wasn’t much to do.

I had to go fishing so I went to Cordova and the fishing was great.

I mean, no one went out and by that time probably over a hundred boats had got on the oil spill contracts so there was a lot less --

they hired a lot of boats to work doing anything, you know.

And so there was a lot less boats out there and it was great fishing for the first three weeks.

But I was partners with my brother and he took over after the -- I basically did the flash part of it and then when it used to open up in the Sound he’d come over and do that.

And so I came back here to Seward and he was there and once the flash slowed down and really the fishing in the Sound is pretty bad.

You know, with all that -- they wouldn’t let us fish very many areas. They had to have a huge testing, you know, done before they'd open an area.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Was that the Coast Guard that was blocked?

BOB LINVILLE: No, that was -- I think that was a Fish & Game and State Department of Environmental Conservation.

They were -- really, you know, nobody wanted to put oiled fish into the market period.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: So, I mean, there wasn't anybody arguing with this. We were lucky we got to fish at all,

but there was few days up in Port Wells out of Whittier that the oil didn’t push up that way so much.

And there was oil in the water on and off and they wouldn’t let you fish for a period of time, but then there was times when there wasn’t any oil and then they’d let us fish there, along there.

My brother did most of that and he got sick of it. There just wasn’t -- wasn’t worth being there.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: Really I think Exxon hired a lot of fishermen just because they --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: They needed them.

BOB LINVILLE: Probably were -- there was going to be -- I mean they blockaded the Valdez Arm to, you know, get attention.

I mean, they weren’t going to just sit there and do nothing.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right. Were you involved in that -- in the blockade?

BOB LINVILLE: No, I wasn’t. Yeah. No.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Yeah, I'm sure you know people that were.

BOB LINVILLE: Well, the seiners were completely beached and so were the setnetters, you know.

And so they, you know, the setnetters are -- they just got skiffs mainly so they didn’t run them all the way to Valdez, you know, through the oil that -- blockade. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: But the seiners they would be fishing there that time of year, I mean first and they were -- they knew they weren’t going to be.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Right.

BOB LINVILLE: They needed -- needed to be heard and I don’t think initially they were being heard.

So I think -- I don’t know where to go from here, but --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Well, you said you were gonna --

BOB LINVILLE: It -- it kind of goes downhill, you know, and Exxon that’s -- I don’t know.

I don’t want to start into that right now.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Well, it's up to you. You said you weren’t going talk about your fish -- fishing business, that you also had another perspective that you wanted to get as well, if you’re complete with the fishing --

BOB LINVILLE: No, I’m not quite done. I mean basically our fishing was --

our setnetting operation, we knew it when we signed the papers with the banker, we knew we weren’t going to be doing it, and we didn’t.

And Exxon did make some compensation for that -- 10 grand basically --

was just basically handed out to fishermen in Area E of all sorts.

And so they did that. And then they -- to get any more there was going to be a process you went through that took time.

So that’s what happened there, you know, we hadn’t yet started and it happened the day we bought -- we were able to buy so we hadn’t bought any equipment and we really didn’t have any additional expenses.

But all of our -- or I think the other part of the story is that there was income to be made from the oil spill cleanup.

Most fishermen were involved in that.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: You didn’t get involved in that at all?

BOB LINVILLE: Well, I did and so that’s the Seward part of the story.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: I see. BOB LINVILLE: So when the oil spill happened we were in Seward, fishing didn’t start until the 15th of May -- drifting. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: And so we had our place at Driftwood Bay and we were really concerned about that.

And I ran out there in my Zodiac, you know, I don’t know a week or two after -- a week after the spill I think and there was oil.

It had come in in about -- I don’t know how long it took that oil -- the leading edge to move by the Seward area, but I think it was a week or 10 days.

And I didn’t get out there until about -- that oil had come by.

And fortunately we had a north wind -- prevailing north wind a little bit when the main leading edge did come by and that saved it to some extent or I'd have had just what we saw in Main Bay and a bunch of other places in Prince William Sound.

But we didn’t get spared. I mean, there was these huge mass of just absolute -- it wasn’t mousse. It hadn’t been worked up into it.

It was just these huge mass of oil with some seaweed and some birds that were just whatever it managed to gather.

There were probably about forty or fifty feet in diameter.

And so you had this -- it was -- the tide hadn’t even really had a chance to spread it over the whole beach yet when I first got there.

I think it probably had just come through the day before and it -- it just --

there's kind of areas you could almost walk around it to get through it from the bottom of the beach to the top, you know.

But this oil was just the blackest -- it wasn’t really mousse, but it was probably just on its own consistency it could sit about four inches thick.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Wow.

BOB LINVILLE: It just came in a pad, like I said, it wouldn’t have if that north wind -- I think we'd have had a lot thicker layer than that at Driftwood.

But within a couple of days I mean it had pretty much just covered everything from high tide to low and was -- everything offshore is kind of part of it, too.

It's just -- oil just kind of there, you know, not going anywhere.

It's bleeding off the beach during the high tide and it's kind of meant -- whatever will float does it and then it just goes back in on the --

So anyway we were totally involved in getting in -- in -- We wanted to be part of this operation that they were trying to organize in Seward.

And it was a few days long process. They had an instant command system.

You go in and tell them you got a boat and you want to be a part of it.

You know, I think by April 10th was our first day something like that. So it took a week or so after the oil went by for that -- that to be organized.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Can I ask you before you get into the cleanup, there's been a fair bit of fishermen talk about there being animosity between friends that were fishermen,

because some people chose to join the cleanup and other people didn’t want to work for the oil companies -- BOB LINVILLE: Yeah.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: -- or for the cleanup.

Did you experience any of that yourself?

BOB LINVILLE: No, I didn’t. I -- I know about it.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Okay.

BOB LINVILLE: I know that -- you know, I don’t really want to say his name, but one of the people you said you interviewed in the past and really that way. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Uh-huh.

BOB LINVILLE: I certainly honor that. And I just don’t know what else we were supposed to do. ALICIA ZORZETTO: Yeah.

BOB LINVILLE: You know and --

ALICIA ZORZETTO: It's difficult --

BOB LINVILLE: I think mostly in the end a lot of people didn’t want to work for the oil company, but I think in the end it -- what are you going to do, you know.

It’s the only way you’ve got any chance of trying to make an income.

There isn’t much other chance when they shut down your fishing business.

ALICIA ZORZETTO: Well, and you mentioned --