Greenpeace and Ocean Alliance ships dock in St. Petersburg on separate courses to study gulf oil spill

ST. PETERSBURG — The 165-foot ship that docked at the Port of St. Petersburg on Wednesday is not like any other ship that's ever dropped anchor there.

For one thing, it's an icebreaker. For another, it belongs to the environmental group Greenpeace, an organization famous for ramming whaling ships. The Arctic Sunrise isn't here to break any ice or stop any whaling, though. Instead, with the help of several universities, it's about to embark on a lengthy mission to study the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico.

Greenpeace isn't the only environmental group that has a ship docked at St. Petersburg's port. A 93-foot sailing ketch called the Odyssey, owned by the Ocean Alliance, just arrived Wednesday as well.

Although the two ships are docked right next to each other, "it's a coincidence that we're both here at the same time," said Vicki Beaver, education coordinator of the Ocean Alliance.

Both ships are doing work in conjunction with academic institutions hoping to assess the damage done by the spill. The Ocean Alliance has partnered with the University of Southern Maine to check whales in the gulf. Greenpeace is working with Texas A&M, Nova University, North Carolina State and Tulane University on various research projects.

"We keep hearing that everything is okay, and we honestly hope everything is okay" in the gulf, said Dan Howells of Greenpeace. "But we're going out to check."

The Odyssey will be sailing out straight into the gulf to do its research. The Arctic Sunrise, which is scheduled to depart today, will take a less direct route. It will head first for the Florida Keys, to search for signs of any oil caught in sponges on the ocean bottom, and then will turn northwest to the spill site to check on whales, turtles, plankton and other potential harbingers of ecological disaster.

All told, the 12-person crew of the Arctic Sunrise expects to be at sea for more than two months under the command of Pete Wilcox. A veteran of three decades of Greenpeace's various campaigns, Wilcox was the captain of the organization's most famous ship, the Rainbow Warrior, on the night French agents bombed and sank it in New Zealand in 1985, killing one crewman. The ship had been scheduled to protest French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.