The stateless drift-netting vessel Bangun Perkasa is under siege in the Port of Dutch Harbor.

Local officials and Alaska Senator Mark Begich are calling for the Coast Guard to scuttle the boat, even as rat eradication efforts get underway.

The 140-foot Perkasa was intercepted by the Coast Guard in mid-September, 2,600 miles southwest of Kodiak and was escorted into Dutch Harbor by the Coast Guard cutter Monro.

The boat’s arrival has produced considerable anxiety among locals, who fear that rats from the ship will make it to shore. A 2007 state law prohibits vessels from entering state waters with rodents onboard, but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game granted the Perkasa an exemption yesterday.  In order to allow State Troopers to evacuate the crew from the vessel, the Perkasa was permitted to enter Broad Bay, just outside Dutch Harbor.

Fish and Game's Tom Schumacher, who helped author the exemption, says federal, state, local, and tribal officials all agreed on the plan before the ship was allowed to enter state waters. The Perkasa was at least a mile offshore at all times, a distance which Fish and Wildlife Biologist Steve Ebbert says is further than most rats can swim.

"They swim away from the vessel, then they'll swim in circles and then eventually just bob up and down like a Coke bottle, with their nose up in the air."

Rat issues aside, local mayor Shirley Marquardt says she doesn't want the vessel to end up docked within the City of Unalaska.

"We don't have dock space to just handle any derelict vessel that gets dumped on our doorstep.  So I'd just as soon it go somewhere else. And frankly I don't care where it goes, other than our port."

Marquardt called for the Coast Guard to scuttle the ship.

"People go, 'Scuttling a ship? You can't do that! You can't put it on the bottom!' Why not? If it's clean of contaminants and it goes down in the bottom of the trench."

Senator Begich also asked the Coast Guard to sink the ship, although for different reasons.

"It will send two messages. One, we're not allowing any rats in Alaska. But the second piece is, if you do illegal fishing in our waters, we're going to sink your ship and be done with it.

The Coast Guard has not yet commented on the possibility of scuttling the Perkasa. Federal law requires a waiting period before the government can dispose of the vessel.