The News

After the disaster that was the 2020 Alaska cruise season when Covid stopped all ships from sailing, large vessel operators were hopeful that their ships would be allowed to sail in 2021, and made plans to offer sailings. Then: a bolt of lightning: the Canadian government announced in February that no cruise ships would be able to stop in Canadian waters. In that non-US built ships are legally required to make a stop in Canada, this ruling had the effect of cancelling all large cruise ships on the Alaska run for probably the entire 2021 season.
Fortunately small ship operators such as Un-Cruise, Lindblad Expeditions and Alaska Dream Cruises will still be offering their cruises.
Sadly this means another very difficult year for towns like Ketchikan and Skagway, for whom much of their annual revenue comes from the big ships. Locals, however, who were not dependent on their incomes from visitors, were probably thrilled to have the towns to themselves! Photo: view to Skagway with two large ships already docked.

In a final decision that surprised many, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has denied a key federal permit to the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), bringing to an end the company’s 13-year-long bid to build the controversial Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska. Scheduled to have been built near the headwaters of the rivers and lakes that supply the fish for the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, the largest red salmon fishery in the world, fishermen were relieved that the danger to their incomes had been eliminated. Photo: the crew of a classic wooden gillnetter haul their net laden with red salmon.

Southeast Alaska’s smaller communities - Tenakee, Hoonah, Gustavus, Angoon, and Pelican were mighty glad when their main connection to Juneau, the Alaska ferry Le Conte, returned to service after February shipyard work. The ferry was out of service for much of 2020 due to an overhaul that revealed that the 47 year old boat needed much more work than previously thought. Without ferry service residents have to depend on much more expensive floatplanes to bring in food and supplies.
Additionally the ferry Aurora, rescued from proposed long term layup by some 5 million dollars in Federal Covid relief funds will return to the route between Cordova and Whittier in Prince William Sound.
The State of Alaska is under considerable financial pressure due to low oil prices and reduced production from North Slope oil fields and budget cuts have hit the ferry service particularly hard.

Commercial fishing is a huge financial contributor to coastal villages and as early preparations for the upcoming salmon season begin, many villages, especially smaller remote native villages in western Alaska, are anxious that arriving fishermen and processing workers may also bring the coronavirus. Medical facilities in the villages are limited at best and a single case of the virus arriving in a village would easily overwhealm the existing medical facilities.

Bristol Bay in western Alaska is the largest salmon fishery in the state. The short six week fishing season involves over 2,000 boats and thousands of processing workers from all over the country. and in an average year is valued at more than 300 million dollars.
Nevertheless, residents of Dillingham and Naknek, the two primary villages in Bristol Bay, are deeply concerned about the possible impact of the virus speading throughout their communities and have asked Alaska’s Governor Mike Dunleavy to cancel the fishery.
Such a move, at a time when the state and many of its residents are suffering from the budget effects of low oil prices - much of the state of Alaska’s revenue comes from oil royalties - would be a huge economic hardship for the region. Many stakeholders are working on possible ways to have the fishery while at the same minimizing the possible health consequences. Stay tuned as the situation develops.

A quiet day on the Bristol Bay fishing grounds.

In a proactive move, on April 7th Trident Seafoods, Alaska’s largest seafood processor, announced that it will quarantine thousands of fish processing workers in Seattle and Alaska hotels for 14 days before they begin their Alaska processing jobs. Food will delivered and hallway patrols will enforce the quarantine.
Trident operates both processing ships nicknamed “floaters” and shoreside processing plants. It is hoped that this move will go a long ways toward alleviating Bristol Bay residents’ concerns about processing workers bringing the virus to remote communities.

Crabber Sinking Investigation Continues

The 130’ king crabber Scandies Rose with seven aboard, sank suddenly off Kodiak Island around 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, 2019. Two of the crew managed to scramble into their survival suits and swim to a liferaft that had been deployed automatically when the vessel sank. The other five men were lost.
Alerted by a Mayday radio call, a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter arrived at the vessel’s location around midnight. The conditions were terrible: 20-30’ seas, 20˚temperatures and 40 knot winds. But in what was nothing less than a miracle, they spotted the light on the liferaft, dropped a rescue swimmer into the water, and rescued both men.

That such a well maintained and well equipped vessel could be lost was another reminder of the deadly effects of ice buildup in strong winds and below freezing temperatures. The owners of the vessel were particularly conscious of the those dangers. In the spring of 2019 they weighed their king crab pots and found they were heavier than the data on which the vessel’s stability letter (which specifies how many crab pots the vessel may safely carry) was based and revised it to reflect the new data.
The loss happened in an area sometimes called “John and Olaf Country” by mariners who remembered the tragic loss of the shrimper John and Olaf in 1971. It was a sobering reminder of the danger of the icing conditions that the particular geography that part of the Alaska Peninsula produces. In certain conditions it appears that bitter air that has accumulated over the land flows violently through valleys and out through the mouths of the coastal bays, particularly Puale Bay. The John and Olaf radioed that they were icing rapidly, afraid that the vessel was going to capsize, and were abandoning ship. The Coast Guard responded immediately, but the big four engined C-130 arriving on scene found it was icing up so badly even 700’ up that it had to abandon the search until the weather moderated.
A nearby crabber, the 170’ Shelikof Strait, converted from a tanker, was alerted by the Coast Guard and attempted to get into Puale Bay to find the John and Olaf. But each time they tried to get in there, the violent winds would push the bow sideways and the effort had to be abandoned. Skipper George Johnson estimated that the wind speed was close to 150mph!!!
When the wind finally relented, a Coast Guard helicopter found the shrimper, heavily encased in ice, tilted to one side on the shore of Puale Bay. A man was lowered to the deck, to find the vessel abandoned, but full cups o coffee still on the galley table. The crew was never found.

The shrimper John and Olaf found abandoned. The four man crew was never found.

The effects of icing, particularly at night, are particularly sinister, as the more ice a vessel accumulates, the more comfortable it feels. This is because icing raises a vessels center of gravity, making it roll more slowly: the effect is to make the vessel’s motion seem more pleasant.
Two and a half years before the loss of the Scandies Rose, another modern and well-equipped crabber, the 110’ Destination disappeared with the loss of all six crew members without even time for a radio call. The Coast Guard investigation said the cause of the sinking was “the captain’s decision to proceed during heavy freezing spray conditions without ensuring the vessel had a margin of stability to withstand an accumulation of ice or without taking sufficient mitigating action to avoid or limit the effects of icing.”
Our 104’ crabber, the Flood Tide had a close call with icing off of Cape St. Elias in 1971 about 1 a.m. Luckily the skipper was on watch and recognized the danger in the change in the boat’s ocean.
As there was no radio call and no survivors, no one actually knows what happened aboard the Destination in her final minutes. But based on my experience in those waters, I suspect that a crewman was on watch, it was dark, the ride was getting more and more comfortable as the ice accumulated, until.. the vessel capsized with no warning.
An even more sobering reminder of how sinister stability issues are occurred on Valentine’s Day, 1983, when two modern crabbers, the sister ships Americus and Altair disappeared with the loss of 14 men without even a mayday call in calm weather. An exhaustive Coast Guard investigation revealed that the addition of heavy winches, booms, and other deck gear had changed the stability characteristics of the vessels so much that they were actually unstable when they left the dock with their decks full of heavy pots. And as they vessels traveled, using fuel from tanks in the bottom of the boat, they slowly became more and more unstable. Until at the end of one of those slow, comfortable rolls, it simply kept going, all the way over. So unexpectedly that neither helmsmen on watch, with the radio microphone hanging from the overhead close by, even had time to pick it up and call.