BON SECOUR, Ala. — A boat that caught fire in Bon Secour Bay on Wednesday afternoon was a total loss.

Magnolia Springs fire chief Jamie Hinton described the boat as a 40 to 50 foot wooden hull vessel that might once have been used as a shrimp boat. The boat was in the middle of the channel burning when Magnolia Springs Volunteer Fire Department responded to a call for assistance from the Bon Secour Volunteer Fire Department, Hinton said on Friday.

MSVFD’s boat has a water pumper on it, but Hinton said a decision was made to let the boat burn since the vessel had nearly burned down to the waterline by the time the firefighting boat arrived.

“Not knowing how much fuel was on the boat, it was better to let the environment burn it off than contaminate the water with fuel,” Hinton said.

About 15 minutes after MSVFD arrived, the boat’s fuel tanks burned, Hinton said, noting the fuel appeared to be gasoline by the nature of the burn.

Those onboard the vessel had already been removed by the time MSVFD arrived. A U.S. Coast Guard boat was at the scene but Hinton said the boat was from the Coast Guard’s “police wing” and had no pumper.

“Other Coast Guard boats are knee deep in the oil spill,” Hinton said, a reference to the Gulf oil spill that was threatening the area’s coastal waters at week’s end.

Normally, a boom would have been placed around the burning boat to contain any fuel leaks, but Hinton said the Gulf oil spill has resulted in every foot of boom being employed to prevent what could be a major environmental catastrophe to the northern Gulf Coast.

“We let the fire do its thing. It was a good outcome from the environmental side,” Hinton said. He pointed out that had firefighters used foam on the fire to put it out it would have resulted in gasoline being on the water.

“Now, basically, we got another fishing reef,” Hinton said of the burned boat.