Maritime Monster All Jobs Moored Here
Last weekend, a teenage fisherman survived atop the hull of a capsized skiff in frigid Bering Sea waters for days while awaiting rescue. Two of his relatives had also been aboard, but died before the U.S. Coast Guard and a Good Samaritan vessel could reach them.
The skiff departed the Alaska Native village of Savoonga late Friday for an extended trip to fish for halibut, part of the pattern of life for the subsistence economy of remote St. Lawrence Island. Three relatives were aboard, two brothers and one cousin. The vessel was supposed to return Sunday morning, but missed its window, and the Alaska State Troopers received a call that it had gone missing at about 1430 hours on Sunday afternoon. The alert was passed to the Coast Guard, but weather prevented the launch of an immediate search.
On Monday morning, once conditions allowed, a large scale operation got under way supported by the USCG and the U.S. Air Froce. A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules search aircraft out of Air Station Kodiak got under way for the 700-mile flight to St. Lawrence Island, a remote Bering Sea outpost that is closer to Russia than to mainland Alaska. At about 1030 hours, the HC-130J aircrew spotted the upturned skiff at a position about four miles to the east of the island. They dropped a life raft and survival gear and called in the skiff’s location to a nearby Good Samaritan vessel, the 160-foot fishing / survey vessel Northwest Explorer.
The crew used a crane and a rescue cradle to bring him aboard. He had symptoms of hypothermia, but was otherwise unharmed physically. His brother’s remains were underneath the skiff; his cousin had survived the capsizing, but had slipped off the upturned hull and perished before rescuers arrived, the captain told ADN. Both of the bodies were retrieved for return to shore.
FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE HERE: maritime-executive.com
