The U.S. Coast Guard searched Sunday for a Seattle-based boat with six crew members aboard that was feared sunk in rough seas about 2 miles northwest of St. George Island, Alaska, Saturday morning.
The F/V Destination, a 98-foot crab boat, sent out an emergency beacon Saturday morning from an area where 30 mph winds, below-freezing temperatures and snow had whipped up 5- to 8-foot seas.
The Coast Guard Cutter Morenthau joined the search Sunday in the Bering Sea, after the Destination's beacon was found Saturday morning. The device is is designed to float away and send an emergency signal to an overhead satellite.
Searchers also found a debris field containing buoys, the Destination's life ring and an oil sheen.
Brent Paine, executive director of the Seattle-based United Catcher Boats, said there are two vessels that fish off Alaska called the F/V Destination. One of them is a trawler that belongs to his association, and is not the one that went missing. Paine said the other vessel �� the target of the Coast Guard search �� is a smaller vessel that has harvested crab.
In the 1990s, 73 crew members died in the Bering Sea crab harvests, which ranked the most hazardous commercial fishery in the United States, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. Crews at the time carried as many pots as possible to quickly trap crab, and overloaded boats was a significant cause of disaster, the institute said.
But in a major change in 2005, the derbies were replaced by a system that divided the harvests among crab boat owners' quotas between vessels. The fleet size shrank, and the crews that continued to capture crab work through longer seasons where they are not in competition with each other.. Safety also was improved by a Coast Guard compliance programs to check vessels to ensure that they were properly loaded.
