COOS BAY, Ore. (AP) - Battered by six days of pounding surf, cracks widened in the steel hull of a grounded cargo ship yesterday, pouring thousands of gallons of oil and diesel fuel onto environmentally sensitive beaches.

Streaks of gooey, tar-like fuel oil streaked the southern Oregon coastline for six miles around the 639-foot New Carissa. As many as 300 workers in yellow slickers and hard hats were called in to mop up the mess with shovels, squeegees and absorbent pompoms.

''I regret very much that we have a very serious incident on our hands,'' said William Milwee, the salvage consultant representing the Japanese company that owns the ship.

Gov. John Kitzhaber considered declaring a state of emergency to mobilize the National Guard to aid in the cleanup, but his office said that wasn't necessary because the Coast Guard can call in the National Guard on its own.

''We're skating on the edge here, hoping, praying, working hard to avoid a disaster,'' said Rep. Peter DeFazio.

The Coast Guard said three of the ship's five fuel tanks were leaking and one, containing heavy fuel oil, was ''seriously breached.'' It was not known how much oil had leaked, but the three tanks hold 140,000 gallons of oil and diesel.

Several oil-covered birds have been found, and special crews were standing by in case the slick threatens the habitat of Western snowy plovers, a threatened bird.

The ship, staffed with a crew of 23, grounded Thursday about 150 yards offshore as it waited to come into port to pick up a load of wood chips. Its crew was removed by the Coast Guard on Friday.

Oil fumes mixed with salt air yesterday as workers packed oil-soaked sand into clear plastic bags, and front-end loaders piled up blackened driftwood.

The thick oil penetrated less than an inch of the sand surface and pooled into depressions. Hundreds of bags of oil-soaked sand had been collected by yesterday afternoon, but long stretches of beach still remained to be cleaned.

''It's nasty, dirty hard work,'' Milwee said, adding that the lighter elements of the fuel oil have evaporated, leaving behind only a gooey, gelatinous muck.

The Coast Guard and salvage teams were going over their options on how best to remove the New Carissa. The 200-foot tug Salvage Chief, a veteran of the 1989 Exxon Valdez recovery, arrived Monday night.

Meanwhile, the panel overseeing restoration of Alaska's Prince William Sound, where the Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil, said yesterday that only two of the nearly two dozen species hurt are fully recovered.