After the rescue of 42 crewmembers from the fishing vessel Alaska Ranger in 2008, author Kalee Thompson produced an in-depth report on one of the most challenging missions in Coast Guard history. She went on to write a book that examined the sinking, the rescue and the fishing industry. We asked for her thoughts on the recently released report of the Marine Board of Investigation since few have examined the case to the extent she has. All opinions expressed by Ms. Thompson are her own and posting her perspective in no way reflects the opinion of the United States Coast Guard.

Photo: A crew member of the Alaska Ranger is taken on board the Coast Guard Cutter Munro. The Alaska Ranger began taking on water 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by CGC Munro)

Guest post by Kalee Thompson

When the bottom trawler Alaska Ranger foundered and sank in the Bering Sea in March 2008 the Coast Guard was ready. The 189-foot fishing vessel began taking on water around 2:20 a.m. on Easter morning. By 4:30, all 47 people on board had abandoned ship. More than half of them failed to get into life rafts. The first Coast Guard rescue asset-an HH-60 Jayhawk, forward deployed to remote St. Paul Island-arrived on scene at 5:00 a.m. and eventually plucked sixteen fishermen from the waves. More men were saved by the crew of an HH-65 Dolphin while a Kodiak C-130 flew cover and provided a communications platform for the rescuers below.

Dozens of Coasties ultimately contributed to the rescue effort and their work paid off: against all odds, 42 of the 47 crew of the Alaska Ranger were recovered alive from dark, 32˚ seas, twenty of them individually pulled from breaking swells by Coast Guard helicopters and then carefully lowered to the flight deck of the Coast Guard Cutter Munro. In terms of the number of people airlifted directly from the ocean, the rescue was unprecedented in Coast Guard history.

I originally reported on the Alaska Ranger case for Popular Mechanics Magazine and in 2010 published a nonfiction book, Deadliest Sea, on the disaster. From the start, it was obvious that much went right on that Easter morning-which is what makes the story both compelling and inspirational. But within a day of the disaster a team of Coast Guard investigators was tasked with investigating what went wrong. Their comprehensive report was released this week.

One veteran Coast Guard officer explained to me early on in my reporting that casualty investigations can be like peeling an onion. “There’s a limit to how far you can go,” he told me. “You never get to the core.” I was surprised to discover, for instance, that the marine board would not be considering past marine casualties involving the Fishing Company of Alaska, the company that owned the ship. To me, those events seemed entirely relevant to the poor safety culture witnessed onboard the Alaska Ranger. I was also disappointed that the board declined to call the company’s owner, Karena Adler, to testify. In the end, it feels like a company that put profit over safety time and again got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

The MBI report is much harder on the Coast Guard’s own. The final report devotes dozens of pages to evaluating the multiple shortcomings of the regional ACSA program (Alternative Compliance and Safety Agreement) that governs the Bering Sea Head and Gut fleet and includes several suggestions for how helicopter rescuers might avoid future mishaps like the one that occurred when a hypothermic Alaska Ranger fishermen fell from a rescue basket during a hoist.

During the course of my book research, I spent time with Coast Guard fishing vessel inspectors in both Washington State and Alaska and found them to be deeply committed to their safety mission. But for years they have been fighting an uphill battle against a regulatory environment that protects the financial interests of industry over the safety of fishermen.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes egregious tragedies to energize public–and Congressional–support for stiffer regulation. New safety standards– like those included in the recently passed Coast Guard Authorization Act — are crucial to providing the Coast Guard with the power to demand and enforce safer conditions in the commercial fishing industry. I hope these new laws will be accompanied soon with funding for more inspectors and resources. Hard-working Coasties and the fishermen they protect deserve nothing less.

Kalee Thompson is a contributing editor at Popular Mechanics Magazine and the author of the book Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History.

Photo: A crew member of the Alaska Ranger is taken on board the Coast Guard Cutter Munro. The Alaska Ranger began taking on water 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor March 23, 2008.(U.S. Coast Guard Photo by CGC Munro)

WASHINGTON — The Coast Guard released Wednesday its final report of the investigation into the March 23, 2008, sinking of the fish-processing vessel Alaska Ranger and the subsequent loss of five of the 47 people aboard the ship.

The Alaska Ranger sank approximately 130 miles west of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Of the 47 people aboard, 42 were rescued, four deceased crewmembers were recovered and one remains missing and is presumed dead. The Coast Guard rescued 20 of the Alaska Ranger’s crew through multiple hoists conducted by HH-60 and HH-65 helicopters, with survivors being transported to and cared for aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Munro. The fishing vessel Alaska Warrior rescued 22 survivors from two liferafts and recovered three deceased crew members from the frigid water.  The fourth deceased crewmember was recovered by the Coast Guard.

The Alaska Ranger was a 189-foot, 1,577 gross ton, fish-processing vessel in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Island federal groundfish trawl fisheries. The vessel was owned by the Fishing Company of Alaska.

The report of investigation details the findings of the Coast Guard’s marine board of investigation as well as recommendations for enhancing safety for fishing vessels.

The Board determined that the cause of the sinking was flooding that likely started in the rudder room, but rapidly progressed to the engine room and other spaces due to a lack of watertight integrity.

While the exact source of the uncontrolled flooding remains unknown, a thorough analysis of the facts indicates the most likely source was related to the vessel’s poor material condition and may have been related to the Kort nozzle struts. The struts support the nozzles shrouding the propellers at the stern of the vessel and are believed to have experienced excessive stresses where they were attached to the vessel’s hull.

The Board concluded that the Fishing Company of Alaska failed to properly maintain the structural condition of the Alaska Ranger. Evidence of extensive and repeated fracturing of the nozzle struts and structural failures in the aft ballast tanks and potable water tanks went unaddressed.

At the time of the casualty, the Fishing Company of Alaska had enrolled the Alaska Ranger into the Coast Guard’s Alternate Compliance Safety Agreement Program, commonly referred to as ACSA. However, ACSA had not yet been effectively implemented, and the Alaska Ranger, with several outstanding deficiencies, was not in compliance with all ACSA requirements.

Based on its findings, the Board made 37 recommendations that address the lack of comprehensive safety regulations for fishing vessels, facilitate the consistent application of existing regulations and correct shortcomings in the ACSA program that existed at the time of the casualty.

Recommendations were also made to ensure crew members have properly sized immersion suits, and to clarify and enforce requirements for licensed crewmembers.

Related to the investigation, the Coast Guard published two marine safety alerts. Alert 1-08, published on May 9, 2009, urged owners and operators to take immediate action to ensure the watertight integrity of their vessels. Alert 3-08, published July 2, 2008, emphasized the need for vessel owners, operators and masters with controllable pitch propellers to understand the design and operation of their system.

The Coast Guard’s 2010 Authorization Act, signed in October 2010, set new requirements for commercial fishing vessels that, when implemented, are expected to enhance crew and vessel safety. Included in the Act are provisions for mandatory safety examinations for vessels operating beyond three miles at sea, as well as construction standards for new vessels greater than 50 feet in length. Additional standards will also be imposed for vessels greater than 79 feet in length.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, from 1994 to 2004, 641 commercial fishermen died while fishing in the United States. Vessel sinkings resulted in more than half of all fatalities. While work-related fatalities for commercial fishermen in Alaska are still very high, they have decreased by 42 percent since the early 1990s. This success is due in part to the Coast Guard implementing new safety requirements in the early 1990s.

The Report of Investigation may be downloaded from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Office of Investigations and Analysis Web site HERE (click to download PDF)

Click HERE to download the NTSB report regarding the sinking

In a feature appropriately titled “Worst Case Scenario” Popular Mechanics brings us “The Coast Guard’s Most Extreme Rescue – Alaska Ranger“. They write:

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the Alaska Ranger. 5, 3, 5, 3 North, 1, 6, 9, 5, 8 West… We are flooding, taking on water in our rudder room.”

It was 2:52 am on March 23, Easter morning, when Coast Guard Station Kodiak picked up the distress call from a point almost 800 miles west, in Alaska’s frigid Bering Sea.

“Roger. Good copy on position… Request to know number onboard, over.”

After a static-filled pause, the answer came through loud and clear: “Number of persons: 47.”

Capt. Peter Jacobsen was in the crowded wheelhouse of the 189-ft. fishing vessel. When the trawler’s emergency alarm had first sounded about an hour before, crew members descended below decks to see water rising fast in the ship’s stern compartments. They had pulled out a pump, but the effort soon looked futile. Now Jacobsen, 65, a veteran captain who had been fishing in the Bering Sea for 23 years, was making calls to his ship’s sister vessels, repeating the coordinates of the Ranger’s position 120 miles west of the Aleutian Island port of Dutch Harbor.

Be sure to visit our previous Alaska Ranger Coverage including commentary by Kennebec Captain titled “Sinking of the Alaska Ranger – Fishing Master vs Captain“. Then read Popular Mechanics full article which can be found HERE.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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INTERESTING LINKS:

• Interview With A Helicopter Rescue Team
• Top 10 Coast Guard Rescue Videos
• Full Alaska Ranger Coverage

MayDay Call:

The fishing vessel Alaska Ranger, which sank last month west of Dutch Harbor had aboard both a captain and a fishing master. Tragically neither survived the sinking. Some of the testimony from crew members has been regarding the relationship between the two. From the Seattle PI coverage of the hearings in Seattle on the sinking of the Alaska Ranger:

Crewman David Hull also told the panel that he believes that the “fish masters” — crew members representing the fish buyer, in many cases Japanese-held companies, responsible for maximizing the catch — often countermanded ship captains working for the Ranger’s owner, Seattle-based Fishing Company of Alaska.

At the company, Hull said, vessel captains can be fired if they don’t follow directions given by the fish masters.

“I don’t want anyone to underestimate the power the Japanese (fish masters) have at FCA,” Hull said. “Honestly, the fish master basically runs the ship. That’s how it stands,” he added.

The Seattle times reported in an earlier article, that crewmembers interviewed testified that:

the relationship between Konno and a previous skipper of the Alaska Ranger was fraught with tension over vessel speeds through ice.

The article reports that the fishing master and the captain at one time had a “yelling match” regarding vessel speed in the ice.

Fishing vessels in Alaska, a demanding, sometime dangerous environment, are faced with balancing results, catching fish and delivering them to port, vs risk, pushing crew and vessel to the limit. How often does this result in yelling matches at sea, fishing master vs captain?

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This post was written by Kennebec Captain who is Master of a large Ro-Ro and graduate of Alaska Maritime Academy where he attended classes at all four campuses: Bering Sea, Aleutian Island, South East and the Gulf. He can also be found at his blog Kennebec Captain.

This past weekend the Alaska Ranger, a fishing vessel in the Bering Sea, made a MAYDAY call (audio, transcript) when the vessel began taking on water near it's rudder. A USCG press release states:

The Coast Guard and fishing vessel Alaska Warrior have recovered 46 of 47 crewmembers from the fishing vessel Alaska Ranger 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Four crewmembers are reported deceased and one missing.

"Saving 42 people in Bering Sea in the winter is an incredible accomplishment," said Commander Todd Trimpert, Chief Incident Management 17th Coast Guard District and experienced Alaska rescue pilot, "we were very fortunate to have the Alaska Warrior in the area."

Crews from an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter from St. Paul, H-65 Dolphin helicopter deployed aboard CGC Munro, C-130 Hercules airplane from Air Station Kodiak and CGC Munro from Kodiak rescued 20 crewmembers in 10-foot seas and 25-knot winds seas while the fishing vessel Alaska Warrior rescued 22.

"When we got on scene there was a spread, at least a mile long, of 13 survivors in gumby suits with strobe lights," said Aviation Survival Technician 2nd Class O'Brien Hollow, Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, "I went down without disconnecting from the helicopter and picked them up one at a time."

The Alaska Ranger has been confirmed sunk.

A Timeline of the rescue can be found HERE.

Here is video of the rescue:

Click here to view the embedded video.