Pilot in San Francisco Bay oil spill had relatively clean record

"The stuff that's well-documented, which is the last 14 years, there hasn't been that much," said Patrick Moloney, executive director of the Board of Pilot Commissioners. "You have to understand that the things a pilot can get investigated for are getting progressively more and more small-magnitude. There are things we used to do in ship-handling, tight situations. ... If you had to, you could put a ship's bow on the riverbank to pivot it about -- today, they call that `running aground.' "

But Wednesday's incident "is clearly worthy of investigation," Moloney said. He has assigned a senior retired shipmaster to handle the case, he said, and his report will be completed within three months. The board and the Coast Guard have "a good working relationship" and almost certainly will share information, he added.

"The idea isn't to run around and point fingers and assign blame, but to find out what happened and what we can learn from it," Moloney said.

"Sometimes there's a punitive action to be taken, but it's way too early to make any surmises at this point."

The pilot became the focus of attention after an afternoon press conference in which a Coast Guard official mistakenly said the pilot had quickly exited the vessel and was not tested until Thursday morning.

The confusion stemmed from the fact that pilot John J. Cota, 59, of Petaluma, did show up for an interview with Coast Guard investigators Thursday morning, but the official wasn't aware that he had been tested within an hour of the impact with a bridge abutment on the Bay Bridge west of Yerba Buena Island, said Coast Guard spokesman Michael Anderson. The concrete abutment was untouched, but a plastic bumper was mangled in the collision.