Deadliest Sea (11 page)

Finally, the ship’s cook remembered the light on his suit, and turned it on. He leaned over the barrel-shaped case and there it was: the clip. You were supposed to hold down the clip then pull off a ring to release the life raft, Eric remembered. With all the ice, it took Eric both hands to push the clip in far enough. Another crewman popped off the ring, and the barrel cracked open, emitting the rubber life raft.

The raft inflated with the tug of the painter line, and swung out and down into the black water.

The plan had always been to launch the raft and then climb down the Jacob’s Ladder from the side of the ship to get in. By pulling on the painter line, a crewman still on the vessel should have been able to hold the raft in place until everyone was inside. Then, the line would be cut.

But when Eric’s raft hit the waves, it immediately shot forward, toward the
Ranger
’s bow.

“It’s going too fast! It’s going too fast!” someone yelled.

Eric stared. The raft was still in sight, but it was nowhere near the Jacob’s Ladder.

Raft number one was also on the starboard side, about twenty feet closer to the bow. Evan watched as another group of men struggled to launch that raft. They, too, were having a hard time. Finally, he saw the forward raft inflate and swing out toward the water. Again, the raft bolted forward, toward the bow of the ship. Then it seemed to disappear.

Holy crap, Evan thought. One of the rafts is gone.

He started doing the math in his head. There were forty-seven on board. With one raft gone, they would just have to try to crowd everyone in the other two. Evan had tied a dozen granny knots in the painter line holding raft number three to the rail. “If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot,” seasoned mariners sometimes joked about the knot-tying skills of newbie crew. In this case Evan had taken the saying seriously. This thing isn’t going anywhere, he’d told himself. But now the raft was so far from the ladder. There were only a few crew members who had actually ever tried getting into a raft straight from the water. Evan had done it during his training in Seattle, but it’d been damn hard. And that was in daylight, in calm water that was a whole lot warmer than the Bering Sea.

Evan and Eric and a couple other crewmen grabbed onto the painter line. They pulled the rear starboard raft with all the strength they had, but it barely budged. It was as if they were on the stern platform of a water-ski boat, trying to pull a guy on a tube in toward the boat as it was skipping at high speed across the water. There was just no way, it wasn’t happening.

The boat’s list seemed to be increasing—or at least the ship seemed to be getting lower in the waves. Water was all the way
up past the base of the gantry. Eric felt like the ship might flip over at any moment. He and Evan told the men at their muster station to start going down the Jacob’s Ladder and to try to swim to the raft.

“Let’s get going, guys! You’re going in one way or another!” Eric yelled. “Keep going,” he instructed as one man after another gripped the ladder and started down the side of the ship.

The men were quiet; they looked calm.

They were scared, Eric knew. He watched each man follow the ladder down and drop into the waves.

In seconds, each one was gone.

B
ACK ON THE FRONT SIDE OF THE WHEELHOUSE
, Julio Morales was still hugging the rail. He’d been holding tight when the ship listed. He’d seen those men fall off and heard everybody yelling “Man overboard!” It seemed like everything had gone from calm to chaos in the moment that the ship tilted to its side. Julio had been thinking that the
Warrior
would get there in time to save everybody. Now, looking out at the empty horizon, he knew no one was coming. They were going into the water.

Other people were moving, but Julio just stayed put. He was thinking. The Coast Guard was on their way. He had overheard the officers making a Mayday call, and made out the words “U.S. Coast Guard” in the answer that came back. It would be better to wait until the last minute to get off the ship, he thought.

Julio could see that the men had launched the life rafts. They were far away from the side of the ship, but they were still in sight. Carefully, Julio made his way to the starboard rail. Byron was already there. There was a raft attached to the ship with a line, and
Julio saw a couple of guys grab on to the rope and follow it into the water. It seemed like they knew what they were doing.

“Grab the rope,” Julio told Byron. “Grab it, follow it down!”

Julio watched from the tilted deck as his cousin grabbed onto the painter line. Byron had his feet against the outside of the ship, and was leaning back with the taut rope in his hands, like a rock climber rappelling down a sheer cliff face.

“
Ayúdame,
Julio!” Byron yelled back up to the deck. “Help me!”

He was only a few feet from the water. The list was so great that the distance from the upper deck to the surface of the ocean was no more than a single story. But Byron seemed stuck.

“Help me!” he yelled again in Spanish.

“How can I help you? Just follow the rope!” Julio yelled back. It was dark, and with the list, it was hard to see from the side of the ship into the waves. Already, it was only blinking strobe lights that allowed the men on deck to identify people in the water. Julio could see that more and more people were going in. Maybe three-quarters of the crew had already abandoned ship. He watched as several men jumped from farther back, on the starboard side.

When he looked down again, Byron was gone.

I
NSIDE THE WHEELHOUSE
, D
AVID
S
ILVEIRA
and Captain Pete Jacobsen were taking turns working the radios, talking to the Coast Guard and the other FCA ships. They knew several boats were steaming toward them with everything they had.

It was around 4:15
A.M
.—an hour and a half after the original Mayday call—when the
Alaska Ranger
initiated a call to the Coast Guard.

“COMMSTA Kodiak,
Alaska Ranger
.”

“
Alaska Ranger, Alaska Ranger,
this is COMMSTA Kodiak, over,” watchstander David Seidl answered.

“We are abandoning ship.” It sounded like a different voice from the one Seidl had heard before.

“We are abandoning ship,” the
Ranger
’s officer repeated. His voice was strained but calm.

“
Alaska Ranger,
this is COMMSTA Kodiak, roger. Confirm you are abandoning ship at this time, over.”

“Roger. Roger.”

“
Alaska Ranger,
this is COMMSTA. Understand you are abandoning ship. Request you keep your EPIRB with you, keep your EPIRB with you, over.”

“Roger. Roger.”

“
Alaska Ranger,
this is COMMSTA Kodiak. Also, be advised a rescue C-130 is airborne and en route to you guys at this time, over.”

Again: “Roger. Roger.”

“
Alaska Ranger,
this is COMMSTA,” Seidl said. “Roger. Be safe. We’ll be there when we can, over.”

“That’s a roger,” came the reply, the voice weak across the eight-hundred-mile swath of sea.

G
wen Rains had been on board the
Alaska Ranger
for four days. For the past two years, she had worked on and off as a federal fisheries observer. In a given year, approximately 350 observers sail on fishing vessels in Alaskan waters, recording information about the catch. Their data are used to manage the fisheries in real time and to set annual quotas for different species.

Smaller vessels under 60 feet in length are exempt from the observer requirement. (Unsurprisingly, 59 feet has become a popular boat length and owners have been known to saw off a couple feet of bow to squeeze in under the limit.) Ships from 60 to 125 feet in length sail with an observer 30 percent of the time. Most large ships, including the
Alaska Ranger
and the rest of the FCA trawlers, sail with two observers every time they leave port.

The cost of running the Alaskan observer program is shouldered mostly by the fishing companies themselves. The price tag is more than $350 per day per observer, just less than half of which goes toward administrative costs. The federal government pays for the observers’ training and for data management through the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which is an agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The job isn’t glamorous. Gwen learned that pretty quickly. An observer’s main task at sea is to sample the ship’s catch. The data are used to assess the overall health of the fishery, and to determine if the ship is observing environmental laws—among them reporting its catch accurately. The end goal is to keep Alaska’s fisheries sustainable. Over a period of three months, an individual observer might spend time on one, two, three, or even four different boats.

Though the fisheries observer program exists across the United States and in many other countries, Alaska’s system is more complex than most. There are a huge number of fisheries, each with its own set of complex regulations. The types of boats vary widely as well. An observer has to learn how to work effectively on long-liners, pot boats, and trawlers, on small boats with just four or five crew, and on huge processors with more than a hundred workers on board. Each ship may present a new gear type, a new daily schedule, and a new method of catching and—often—processing fish.

On each boat, Gwen had to figure out the best method for taking a scientifically sound, random sample of the catch. How much fish was the ship hauling up? What was the distribution of species? What prohibited species were being caught, and in what quantities? If time permitted, she would sex her fish samples by examining the gonads and determine age by extracting
the otoliths, tiny ear bones whose annual ridges can be counted like tree rings. The work was messy and smelly. It took place either on the cold, wet deck of a catcher boat bouncing in the Alaskan waves or, on the larger processing boats, belowdecks in a frigid, damp factory reeking of fish—and fishermen.

The hours were long. But on a large vessel with two observers on board, like the
Ranger,
the shifts were relatively stable. Each observer worked twelve hours on, twelve hours off while the boat was actively fishing. (When the ship was transiting to or from the fishing grounds, there’d often be paperwork to do, or sleep to catch up on.) Each time the catch was hauled aboard, an observer had to be there to take a sample. On most boats, Gwen sent daily forms via e-mail from the ship to the program administrators at NMFS. Observer data can shut down a fishery if, for instance, sampling reveals that a large amount of prohibited species are being pulled up in the haul. In addition to keeping track of what the boat wants to catch (the “targeted” species) observers are responsible for documenting “prohibs” like halibut, crab, and salmon, whose harvest is strictly allocated to specific types of boats. A factory trawler is never allowed to keep these species; rather, they have to be thrown back into the ocean, alive or dead. They’re usually dead.

Fisheries observers sometimes have to play the role of cops on ships, and that means they’re occasionally treated with contempt. It wasn’t an easy job, but Gwen loved it. Like most observers, she worked for a few months and then took a few months off. She noticed that during the time away, the drudgery of the job tended to fade from her memory, while the joys—the crisp summer days in Dutch Harbor, the late-night chats with captains in the rolling wheelhouse—stayed with her.

Gwen worked for Saltwater Inc., one of five private companies that contracted with NMFS to provide observers for the Alas
kan fisheries. The starting pay was $130 a day. By 2008, Gwen had worked her way up to a $190 daily wage. Except for the odd meal out in Dutch Harbor, food and housing were paid for. She got an allowance for clothing, and the company paid her airfare to and from the fishing ports and back to Seattle, where she debriefed with a NMFS staff member before heading home. A lot of fishermen—and observers, too—blew a great deal of cash on alcohol when they were in Dutch, but Gwen wasn’t a big drinker. She saved pretty much all she earned, about $15,000 in a three-month stint.

At thirty-eight, Gwen was older than the average fisheries observer. The prerequisites for the job include a four-year science degree, preferably in biology or marine biology, and at least one class in both math and statistics. Of approximately two hundred new observers trained in a given year, only half will come back after their first three-month contract. Of those remaining hundred, perhaps fifty will still be in the job a year later. Like many fishermen, most new observers arrive in their first Alaskan port having never spent significant time on a boat. The majority are in their early twenties and looking to make some money and get some real-world experience before applying to grad school.

Gwen didn’t fit the obvious mold. She was from Marshall, Arkansas, a divorced mom with four kids at home—two boys and two girls, ranging in age from ten to seventeen. She’d dreamed of being a marine biologist since she was a child and had spent years working her way to a four-year biology degree from the University of Central Arkansas. In June 2006, she spotted the fisheries observer position on the job search Web site Monster. com. In July Gwen was on a plane to Anchorage. She’d struggled with the decision to leave her kids with their dad for the months she’d be in Alaska. But the job felt like the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. She decided to go.

In the two years since then, Gwen had worked on a variety of boats, including a couple owned by the Fishing Company of Alaska. She had probably spent half her total sea days on FCA boats. All of them had Japanese fish masters. Gwen had heard from other observers about Dutch Harbor boats with Norwegian fish masters. If a company hired a fish master, he was pretty much the number one person on the boat—the guy who’d be making the key calls. As Gwen saw it, the captain was essentially a taxicab driver.

Gwen was told to report to the
Ranger
in the third week of March 2008. She was waiting at the pier when the boat pulled up, at close to 2:00 in the morning. As Gwen boarded the ship for the first time, her friend Christina Craemer, a Saltwater observer who had been on the ship since A season began in mid-January, was getting off. Chris and Gwen had gone through the three-week observer training class together in Anchorage a year and half before, and they’d hit it off right away. They were both a bit older than the average student and were both from small farming communities. Gwen and Chris recognized an appealing, down-to-earth quality in each other. They were both runners, and enjoyed jogging together when they found themselves with the same off time in Dutch Harbor.

Chris told Gwen about the recent changes on the ship: how Captain Steve Slotvig had left the boat after a series of fights with the fish master and been replaced by Pete Jacobsen. Another FCA captain, David Silveira, had come on as first mate.

Gwen was happy with the news. Silveira normally sailed as the captain of the FCA long-liner
Alaska Pioneer,
and Gwen had been aboard that ship the previous two B seasons. She’d spent dozens of hours in the wheelhouse talking with the handsome former tuna fisherman and counted him among her favorite people in Dutch Harbor. Silveira was extremely charismatic.
He could be stern when he needed to be, but it was obvious he had a big heart. He was the type who often went out of his way to assist crew members with their personal problems—and to be helpful to observers.

It was part of Gwen’s job to record any marine mammal sightings when at sea, but mostly she just loved to stare at the animals for as long as possible. Every time Silveira spotted a pod of whales from the
Pioneer
’s wheelhouse, he’d announce Gwen’s name over the ship’s loudspeaker. Silveira didn’t want to distract his crew—many of whom would be handling dangerous hooks and lines—by announcing a whale sighting. But Gwen knew that when she heard Silveira say her name there was something to see.

Both Chris and Gwen knew that often the best way to get to know men on the ships was to ask them questions about their families. A lot of fishermen put on a tough guy persona. And there was plenty of truth to it: Many of the men working on the
Ranger
had criminal records. One quip around Dutch was that FCA was really an acronym for “Felons Cruising Alaska.” Many of the fishermen would talk openly about the time they’d served, or about their history with drug or alcohol abuse. But once the observers got to know the individual guys, they usually found that most of them were hardworking men doing their best to make a living at something respectable. There was no denying that it tended to be a rough crowd on the bigger factory boats. There was going to be a lot of attitude, a lot of foul language, maybe a few fights. As an observer, you had to expect that. You were entering their world, after all.

Captain Pete, though, was a different type. In his mid-sixties, he was older than the rest of the crew. He was small and thin, with a gray beard that he kept neatly trimmed. His manner was calm—soft-spoken, even. He rarely yelled, which was not some
thing that could be said of many captains. Pete Jacobsen was a kind man, and generous with his time. Earlier that winter, he had personally gone out and bought new carpet for the observers’ room after noticing that it was particularly musty. The act was unprompted; no one had complained about it. The captain laid the new carpet down himself.

Pete was a neat freak and would personally sweep the wheelhouse every single day. Sometimes he would vacuum, too, even though he could have had someone else do it; it was someone else’s job. Even on the ship, he dressed well, often wearing a button-up shirt with a pointed collar and snap buttons that his third wife, Patty, had made for him. At home in Lynnwood, Washington, Pete was the kind of husband who would spend all day working on a clogged drain, or he would search the whole house to help Patty find a missing sock. After twenty years of marriage, Pete was still awed by the way his wife held their lives together while he was gone. It could be hard. He’d worked for the FCA since the start, and even though he told Patty it was the Japanese who really ran the company, he felt an intense loyalty to FCA owner Karena Adler. When the company called, Pete never said no. They might have plans for a trip the next day, but still he’d be headed back up to Dutch. Patty would be at home in Lynnwood, taking care of the kids and later the grandkids. Pete had two children with Patty, a stepson named Scott, and a daughter named Erica. And he had two children from his first marriage, Carl and Karen.

Pete hadn’t been in good touch with his older children for many years. But more recently, he and his daughter Karen had grown closer. Pete was proud of the things she’d accomplished—her master’s degree and her job as a nutritionist. Karen had become a devout Christian, and on the few occasions when she visited her father in Seattle, they went together to a Baptist church near his home. For her thirtieth birthday, Pete bought Karen a
mariner’s cross, a necklace with a pendant of Jesus on a ship’s wheel and anchor. A few years later, Karen selected a leather-bound Bible for her father, and had “Captain Eric Peter Jacobsen” embossed on the soft cover.

Pete Jacobsen loved his family, that was clear. But for more than twenty years, he’d spent nine, ten—sometimes eleven—months out of the year in Alaska. Sometimes when Pete talked about his children, it seemed like he was talking about people he didn’t know all that well.

L
ED BY
C
APTAIN
P
ETE
, G
WEN WALKED
through the
Ranger
looking at safety gear. Each time she got under way on a new boat, Gwen was required to check that the ship had a current Coast Guard safety decal—a sticker issued to a vessel after a successful dockside exam—and to fill out a standardized safety checklist in her logbook. The efforts were for her own benefit: to determine that the ship was safe enough for her to board.

She checked out the ship’s survival suits and the EPIRB. She noted that a number of the
Ranger
’s fire extinguishers did not appear to be in “good and serviceable condition” as her list stated they should be. Gwen’s form was divided between “go” and “no-go” items. The Coast Guard decal was a no-go: If the boat didn’t have one, or if it wasn’t up-to-date, she couldn’t sail on the ship.

That observer program rule had turned the Coast Guard’s so-called voluntary dockside exam into a mandatory one, at least for ships over sixty feet. It made sense that NMFS wanted to protect its own people by ensuring that the boats they’d be working on had the proper safety equipment. But the decal rule begged the question: If a boat isn’t safe enough for a government observer, why is it safe enough for a few dozen fisheries workers
who are likely to have even
less
safety training? It was a double standard, one that seemed to say that the life of an observer was more worth protecting than the life of a fisherman.

The rule was a sore spot among those in the Coast Guard who had been arguing for mandatory inspections for years. It was embarrassing that the Coast Guard couldn’t enforce inspections but that the fishery management body could—and in a very short amount of time, without public comment.