17th District Office of Public Affairs
U.S. Coast Guard

Date: Jan. 4, 2006 
Contact: Petty Officer Sara Francis 
(907) 271-2660 

After 4 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, (907) 463-2000 

Press Release

Are you ready for sea?

Coast Guard helps fishermen gear up for opilio crab harvest

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The Coast Guard is assisting fishermen with safety preparedness during the 2005/2006 crab season in the Bering Sea and the waters off Kodiak Island. Coast Guard teams have been and will continue to conduct safety exams and training.

The king crab fishery has been underway since October 15. The opilio crab fishery opened at the same time but due to the crab growth cycle the majority of the 37,184,000 pound quota is unharvested.

A Coast Guard cutter equipped with an HH-65 Dolphin helicopter and crew will maintain a search and rescue guard in the fleet's vicinity. A Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk and crew from Kodiak will be forward deployed to St. Paul around January 9 to cover the increased activity in the area and facilitate a faster response time. Air Station Kodiak personnel monitor VHF channel 16 and the Coast Guard Communications Station on Kodiak continually monitors HF channels.

A training team from Marine Safety Office (MSO) Anchorage along with the Marine Safety Detachment (MSD) in Unalaska is hosting training sessions to review personal safety equipment, damage control training and vessel stability January 5 – January 10 in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska. Specific activity dates and times will be posted around town or participants can call the Dutch Harbor office at (907) 581-3466.

The training is designed to make crew members aware of how stability issues such as properly loading crab pots, icing, progressive flooding and watertight integrity affect fishing vessels.

Survival suit training will be held in the small boat harbor, weather permitting. Properly donning a survival suit in an emergency situation is vital to survival in the frigid Alaska waters. The Coast Guard and attendees will practice getting into the survival suits and climbing into a life raft. Practicing these skills and testing survival equipment in a controlled environment is vastly different from the actual conditions of a vessel in trouble at sea.

“Finding out that your survival suit leaks five feet from shore with your buddies around to help you is far better than first learning it leaks when you’ve fallen overboard into 40 degree water in the middle of the Bering Sea,” said Charlie Medlicott, the commercial fishing vessel safety coordinator at MSO Anchorage.

The Kodiak office, in conjunction with the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association (AMSEA), will hold survival training at the Coast Guard pool January 10 at 1 p.m. This will be “wet” training and include the donning of immersion suits, entering and righting a liferaft, and personal flotation devices.  This training will count as two hours towards the 10 hour USCG approved drill instructor course.  Vessel inspections have already begun. To schedule an inspection call the Marine Safety Detachment at (907) 486-5918.