The owner of a 128-foot crab boat that caught fire and sank in Penn Cove in 2012 has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge.

Rory Westmoreland, a scrap metal dealer, pleaded guilty in Island County District Court Tuesday to vessel abandonment, a misdemeanor.

Deputy Prosecutor Chris Anderson said sentencing will be held at a later date. He’s going to recommend a top-of-the-range sentence of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Under the plea bargain, Westmoreland won’t have to pay restitution for the cost of cleaning up the estimated 5,555 gallons of fuel that spilled into Penn Cove, forcing the temporary closure of the shellfish farm.

The Department of Ecology recovered $1.56 million in spill response expenses from the National Pollution Fund Center; the federal government may go after Westmoreland to recoup the money, according to the Department of Ecology.

Last year, the state levied a $301,000 fine against Westmoreland for failing to report an oil spill, for failing to clean up an oil spill and for the oil spill itself.

Westmoreland had the boat towed to Penn Cove in December of 2011.

On the night of May 12, 2012, the Deep Sea crab boat caught fire — in what was later determined to be arson — while illegally anchored on state-owned aquatic lands, according to the Department of Ecology.

Firefighters attacked the fire that night and the next day, but it rolled on its port side and sank May 13, spilling fuel. Diving contractors hired by the U.S. Coast Guard removed 3,100 gallons of oil from the sunken vessel.

The boat was later raised and towed to King County where it was cut up into scrap metal.

In an unrelated case last year, the state Attorney General’s Office charged Westmoreland in King County Superior Court for allegedly abandoning about 40 barrels of hazardous waste in a property from which he was evicted in 2012, according to court documents.