Rob Almeida’s interview with Kalee Thompson, author of Deadliest Sea. This incredibly well written book details the sinking of the F/V Alaska Ranger in 2008, and the subsequent high seas rescue of her crew far offshore in the Bering Sea. It’s a must-read for anyone venturing offshore, and especially those who set sail from Dutch Harbor.
Rob Almeida is Partner/CMO at gCaptain. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1999 with a B.S in Naval Architecture and spent 6.5 years on active duty as a Surface Warfare Officer. He worked for a year as a Roughneck/Rig Manager trainee on board the drillship Discoverer Americas. Rob is an accomplished sailor and competes in the US Australian Rules Football League. Rob can be reached at rob@gcaptain.com and via Google Plus
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Here, in this GCaptain post, the Bering Sea is recognized as ‘The Deadliest Sea,’ (though the Southern Ocean is hardly less deadly…)
But then, a few dozen posts ago, there was a call to open the Arctic to the oil industry.
We cannot have it both ways.
On the one hand we imagine the stuff of legendary heroics, and admirable resolve upon those who take to those seas.
But then too, we imagine those seas as manageable enough to exploit with technology that is by definition inadequate, because nature triumphs over man when it pleases, perhaps more so in the Arctic than in other places.
The fact is, a major spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, a paradise of conditions in comparison to the Arctic, and it was not manageable.
That is, unless we consider hiding the spill with dispersants, ‘managing the spill,’ which it is not.
The Arctic is not El Dorado, not mythical or so distant we cannot understand it, it is a real and comprehendable place.
Imaginings about its possibilities have no place in practical considerations on how to treat it, not when there is available to us plenty of factual information upon which sound decisions can be made.
We can certainly begin by untangling our conflicting conceptions about the place.