USCGC Red Birch (WLM-687) is a Red-class coastal buoy tender that was designed, built, owned, and operated by the United States Coast Guard.

[2] Her secondary missions included search and rescue, light icebreaking, law enforcement, and marine environmental protection.

At the end of her Coast Guard career she was transferred to the Argentine Navy, which renamed her ARA Punta Alta.

He was the ranking Republican member of the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which had jurisdiction over the Coast Guard budget.

Her shallow draft and flat bottom was required for her work along the edges of dredged channels, but this hull form made her harder to maneuver and more prone to rolling.

[7] Red Birch was placed in "commission, special" status at a ceremony at the Coast Guard Yard on 7 June 1965.

[3] Rear Admiral Joseph Scullion, Comptroller of the Coast Guard, was the featured speaker at the event.

[4] During her years in San Francisco, a number of the floating buoys in the shallow parts of Red Birch's area were replaced by fixed marks.

[11] The bulk of her time was spent at sea tending her buoy fleet and a number of lighthouses, or moored, maintaining the ship and training the crew.

On 1 October 1965, the freighter Louisiana Maru and the train ferry Las Palmas collided east of Treasure Island.

[17] Red Birch recovered the bodies of two men who drowned when their boat capsized in San Francisco Bay in December 1972.

[18] Red Birch recovered a car that broke through a barrier on the Antioch Bridge and sank to the bottom of the San Joaquin River in 1972.

Red Birch was dispatched to the scene and reported that over 200,000 gallons of bunker oil had already spilled into the bay from Oregon Standard.

[22] USCGC Walnut and Red Birch tested a High-Seas Oil Containment Barrier off Point Conception in 1972.

[27] The Surry nuclear power plant was shut down briefly in January 1977 when the James River, its source for cooling water, froze.

This transfer was part of a comprehensive program to improve the Argentine Navy's ability to interdict illicit drugs and their precursor chemicals.

[44] Punta Alta trained with a number of other Argentine Navy ships in preparation for the summer 2022-23 Antarctic campaign.