Salvage team tows wrecked fishing boat off Hawaii reef

The fishing vessel Pacific Paradise is towed out to sea after being removed from a reef just off Waikiki where it ran aground nearly two months ago, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in Honolulu. The commercial fishing vessel was carrying foreign workers to Hawaii when it crashed into the reef and later caught fire and leaked fuel into the ocean. It will be sunk by a team of salvage workers at an EPA-approved site about 13 miles south of Oahu. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)
The fishing vessel Pacific Paradise is towed out to sea after being removed from a reef just off Waikiki where it ran aground nearly two months ago, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017 in Honolulu. The commercial fishing vessel was carrying foreign workers to Hawaii when it crashed into the reef and later caught fire and leaked fuel into the ocean. It will be sunk by a team of salvage workers at an EPA-approved site about 13 miles south of Oahu. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)

HONOLULU (AP) - A commercial fishing vessel carrying foreign workers ran aground and later burned and leaked fuel just off the beaches of Waikiki was towed out to sea Thursday and will be sunk by a team of salvage workers.

After being patched up and filled with foam to regain buoyancy, the 79-foot Pacific Paradise was hooked to a tug boat and hauled into deeper water as a crowd of people on the beach cheered.

An attempt to tow the boat to sea Wednesday failed after it was removed from the reef but then became stuck again in a shallow, sandy area about 600 feet away, forcing salvagers to wait until high tide Thursday morning.

"The current plan is to get it out about 13 miles offshore, that's south of Oahu, to an EPA-approved disposal site," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Muir said. "It should sink to about 1,800 feet."

Officials say there could still be up to 1,500 gallons of fuel remaining on the boat when it sinks.

The crash raised new questions about the safety and working conditions of foreign laborers in the Hawaii fleet. No one aboard called for help when it crashed, and rescue teams responded to eyewitness reports. They rescued 19 foreign workers and an American captain, who were then taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to a pier to be interviewed and placed on other boats.

"There's a little bit of concern as to why there was so many crew members onboard," said Honolulu resident Jeff Olin, who was at the beach Thursday to watch the removal. "That's definitely another part of the equation that needs some answers to."

The vessel usually has a crew of six, and while it was unclear exactly how many bunks were on the Pacific Paradise, similar boats typically have no more than 10 beds for crew to sleep. It would have taken at least 12 days for the boat to make it from American Samoa, where it picked up the Southeast Asian crew members, to Hawaii.

The Pacific Paradise - based in Honolulu and used to catch tuna in the Pacific - smashed into the shallow reef just before midnight Oct. 10 in about 6 feet of water just a few hundred yards offshore. Days later,__ it caught fire as a salvage team prepared it to be towed, causing extensive damage that slowed its removal and sent fishing hooks, fuel and oil into the ocean.

A 2016 Associated Press investigation revealed the fishing fleet exploits a loophole in federal law to employ men from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific nations for a fraction of the pay an American worker would get, with some making as little as 70 cents an hour.

The men do not have authorization to enter the United States, so they are confined to boats while docked in Honolulu and not eligible for most basic labor protections. The AP report revealed instances of abuse and claims of human trafficking among the fleet.

Under the law, U.S. citizens must make up 75 percent of the crew on most American commercial fishing boats. But in Hawaii, the loophole carved out to support one of the state's biggest industries exempts commercial fishing boat owners from the rules enforced almost everywhere else.

The recently introduced Sustainable Fishing Workforce Protection Act would close the loophole that has allowed the Hawaii fleet to employ the workers.

A banner reading "end slave-like labor in Hawaii longline fishery" had been placed on the beach near the wreck by an activist from Turtle Island Restoration Network, which has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Dylan Bedortha, the group's advocacy associate who set up the sign, formerly worked as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observer in Hawaii's longline fishing fleet. He said the conditions he saw on the boats as a federal employee made him change his career path.

"It took me a couple of years to really let all that sink in and see what was actually going on on some of the worse boats that I was on," Bedortha said. "I decided to take a different direction and step into the conservation side of things."

The commission is an autonomous body of the Organization of American States and works to protect human rights. The U.S. is a member.

The complaint asks the commission to determine the responsibility of the U.S. government for human rights abuses against foreign workers in Hawaii.

Most of the foreign workers aboard the Pacific Paradise were from Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Kiribati, and they were not part of the regular crew.