On December 4, 2008, the Antarctic cruise vessel MV Ushuaia grounded at the entrance of Wilhelmina Bay near Cape Anna in the NW Antarctic Peninsula.
The 82 passengers which were on board were transferred to Chilean Naval Vessel Achilles next day using a Zodiac landing craft from the MV Ushuaia and from another Anarctic tourist vessel. The crew of the Ushuaia remained on board. Two diesel tanks were damaged and spilled marine gasoil into the sea. The size of the spill was initially estimated with 50x300 meters.
On high resolution imagery acquired by the German radar satellite TerraSAR-X on December, 6 and 7, 2008, no oil spill could be detected; however, this could be either due to a rapid oil dispersal by wind and waves or to the type of oil (marine gasoil) which is very light and not easy to detect from radar satellite data.
On December 8, 2008, the vessel was successfully refloated and transferred to Paradise Bay where further inspection takes place.
The map shows the situation on December 6, 2008, based on TerraSAR-X Stripmap data. The zoom shows the vessel on December 7, 2008, and is based on a TerraSAR-X Spotlight scene
