One Summer in Alaska : Epilogue

Easter Sunday March 23, 2008.

“The fishing trawler Alaska Ranger began taking on water in Alaska’s Bering Sea. By 4:30 a.m. all 47 people on board had abandoned ship. More than half failed to make it into a life raft. Bobbing in the darkness, many of the fishermen watched as the 184-foot steel-hulled boat plunged down into the sea, and disappeared beneath the icy waves.”

Last night I finished reading the book Deadliest Sea by Kalee Thompson, about the sinking of the Alaska Ranger and the ensuing intricately choreographed Coast Guard rescue operation. I don’t remember exactly when I first heard about the Alaska Ranger sinking. I think Rob may have emailed me a link to a news story shortly after it happened. I do know that I discovered the Wikipedia article detailing the accident about ten years ago and have since made it a part of the story whenever I tell it. I came across the book Deadliest Sea in the summer of 2018, but I didn’t think about it too much. As I was writing this blog series I decided it would make sense to finally read the book about the sinking of my boat.¹

If you enjoyed reading about my fishing boat story or you are a fan of the Coast Guard I recommend this book. You won’t be disappointed. I kept putting off my self-assigned homework, but once I started reading I was hooked². The beginning of the story starts with a description of the boat and several of the people we meet in the first chapters joined the crew of the Alaska Ranger the same way that Rob and I did. Young men with little or no experience who heard the work might be hard, but a lot of money could be made. I don’t think any of the crew on board at the time of the sinking were under twenty-one and I wonder if this was something that changed during the years between 1990 and 2018.

Reading the book I learned that many things did change, all for the better. To begin with the processors on the factory deck only worked 12 hour shifts and then got six hours off before working again. It still meant that you could work 18 hours in a 24 hour period, but not 20 hours straight. Progress. A portion of the book is dedicated to explaining how the existence and enforcement of safety regulations for “Head and gut” boats has changed since the 1990’s. Because of a high profile death of a college student working on a fishing vessel in 1980’s the Commercial Fishing Safety Act of 1988 was passed and went into effect in 1991.

While this made all of the fishing companies a little more safety minded, “head and gut” trawlers, like the Alaska Ranger, are not in a class of vessels that are required to comply with the new regulations. In the early 2000’s the District Commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska was concerned with the number of accidents and fatalities in this class of boat and came up with a way to enforce something called The Alternate Compliance and Safety Agreement(ACSA). The short version is that until this time “fish and gut” boats did not have to submit to any safety inspections. They could be boarded and inspected for violating fishing rights (boats can only fish for certain species), but safety was all on the fishing boat companies. One of the small changes that came out of the ACSA was ensuring that all crew members on board had a survival suit with a flashing rescue light. These lights were called out in the Alaska Ranger incident investigation as changing the “Search and Rescue” to mostly a “Rescue” because the crew members who did not make it to a raft could still be spotted from the rescue helicopters.

There is a lot made in the book about safety training and practicing – or the lack thereof. The two fisheries observers on the boat worked for a different company and received hours of training on the survival suits, life rafts, tips for cold water survival, and even CPR. The FCA crew members on the Alaska Ranger got a short talk and were shown where the suits and rafts were kept³. When we were on the boat I don’t know if they had survival suits for each of us. Our adventure happened before shows like the Deadliest Catch were made popular and I was never once concerned about the boat being unsafe – I was too tired to think about it probably. Reading the book and the list of boats that have sunk and the people who have died is sobering. Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. “In 2008 the annual fatality rate among all U.S. fisherman was thirty-six times higher than for all U.S. workers.”⁴

Deadliest Sea switches from the point of view of the Alaska Ranger crew and the Coast Guard rescuers. While that second part reads a but like recruitment material for the U.S. Coast Guard they are both amazing stories and I had no problem staying up until one a.m. last night reading.⁵ The rescue involved two Coast Guard Helicopters, a Coast Guard cutter, and help from FCA boat Alaska Warrior because they were fishing in the same waters. If you decide to pick up a copy of the book⁶ I should caution you that not everyone on board was rescued. Five people died including the ship’s captain and a factory processor worker who had been on the boat for only a few days. The body of the Japanese Fish master was never recovered and it is assumed that he went down with the ship.

1. Also I knew it would allow to stretch this series to at least one more blog post.
2. Hooked. Get it? It’s a fishing boat.
3. Which is more than the six college kids on the crew in July 1990 received.
4. It has gotten a lot better and in fiscal year 2021 and 2022 there were no reported deaths. “There’s a seriously downward-sloping trend of operational fatalities in the fishing industry in Alaska from 1990 to today”
5. I didn’t quite finish the book last night, but when I started reading the book again today I only had about five pages left – the rest was all footnotes. And not the funny ones like mine.
6. Rob, if you are reading this your copy should arrive sometime on today.