Ex-crewman: Workers smuggled alcohol onboard
http://www.komotv.com/news/local/17181606.html
SEATTLE -- A man who used to work aboard the Alaska Ranger claims several crew members smuggled alcohol
onboard the ship for every fishing trip.
The Seattle-based vessel left Dutch Harbor shortly after noon March 22 and had traveled about 120 miles when water
flooded the boat.
The bodies of Captain Eric Peter Jacobsen, chief engineer Daniel Cook, crewmates David Silveira and Byron Carrillo
were recovered. The body of Satoshi Konno, of Japan, has not been found.
The Coast Guard and the Alaska Ranger's sister ship, the Alaska Warrior, rescued 42 other crewmen.
Those who survived the vessel's sinking into the Bering Sea have been testifying before the Coast Guard Marine Board
of Investigation.
The former employee, who showed KOMO 4 News home video he once shot aboard the Alaska Ranger as proof of his
employment, was among those who testified. He is one of the few who have brought forth allegations of alcohol use
aboard the ship.
"It was pretty much your standard fifth, half-gallon - kind of what they could get on," said the man who wished to
remain anonymous.
When asked whether he ever saw any crew members drunk on the job, the man said yes.
"I remember one guy would use a water bottle... and put the vodka in there and pretty soon it was pretty obvious that
'somebody' who loses their balance, that 'somebody' has been drinking and it's not just water," he said.
The former employee was not the first to accuse the ship's crew members of drinking.
Under oath, first-year crewman Julio Morales told investigators on Sunday that while waiting to be rescued, he smelled
alcohol on the breath of Chief Engineer Daniel Cook, who later died.
But another crewman refuted that testimony.
The former employee said he never worked with Cook but did work with Capt. Pete Jacobsen, who also died. The man
said he never saw Jacobsen take one sip of alcohol, even on shore. But he said the same could not be said of some of
the crew members.
"There's more than one occasion that I can think of," he said of alcohol use.
The man said his own dedication to safety prompted him to come forward with the information.
"Because I've been on boat's where water coming onboard is an issue and been scared because of fires and floods," he
said. "You want to be of the right mind to ensure your safety and other people's safety."
Fishing Company of Alaska, which owns the Alaska Ranger, has a strict no-alcohol policy. Federal law also prohibits
officers from drinking alcohol on any vessel.
Alaska Ranger survivors recall jarring ice collisions
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgibin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2004318873&zsection_id=2003925728&slug=ranger01m&date=20080401
UNALASKA, Alaska — Two survivors of the Alaska Ranger's sinking say sharp-ice encounters on previous fishing trips
might have made the vessel vulnerable to leaks.
The sailors said the worst ice encounters were in February, when the Alaska Ranger — with fish master Satoshi Konno
pushing for speed — plowed through broken ice pans.
"Every time the boat would hit the ice ... there was a hard jerk," Ryan Shuck said of one rough return to port.
"You could feel the whole hull vibrate," said Jeremy Freitag, another crewman.
Ice impacts on winter fishing trips also have gained the attention of the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation, which
is examining the circumstances surrounding the March 23 sinking of the vessel. The ship, operated by Seattle-based
Fishing Company of Alaska, lost five of the 47 crew members.
The vessel last fall was in a shipyard, where its hull was worked on and inspected. Still, major flooding enveloped the
rudder room and another compartment just above, according to inquiry testimony.
On Monday, Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board officials began to gather information about the ice
and the conduct of fish master Konno, who died during the Easter Sunday sinking.
Shuck and Freitag are not in Unalaska this week. They have returned to their home states and are expected to testify later
in Seattle.
They said in separate telephone interviews Monday that the relationship between Konno and a previous skipper of the
Alaska Ranger was fraught with tension over vessel speeds through ice.
They say that the former skipper, when he was at the helm, went very slowly through the ice. And they say he repeatedly
complained to them about the fish master's efforts to ramp up the vessel's speed in areas of floating ice.
"We make our money on a quota by being fast," Shuck said. "So, the fish master wanted to get in, get offloaded, and get
back out quickly. The captain wanted to be fast. But he also wanted to be ethical and make us safe."
Yelling match
Shuck said the most jarring ice encounter came as the vessel was rushing back to port to unload fish in mid-February,
and the captain was awakened by jarring. Shuck said he heard a yelling match between the skipper and Konno over the
ice speed.
After returning to port, the skipper left the vessel, Shuck said. The former skipper could not be reached for comment
Monday.
Fish masters from Japan, such as Konno, serve on some factory trawlers, helping to direct the operation of fishing nets
and oversee processing.
These foreign fish masters may work in the wheelhouse, but federal law prohibits them from acting as a skipper at the
helm, according to Coast Guard officials. But there has been considerable tension over the sway that fish masters might
have over the U.S. skippers, an issue pursued Monday at the Coast Guard hearing.
Crewman Evan Holmes testified that the fish master often was in the wheelhouse but directed fishing operations — not
the overall operation of the vessel.
Holmes, who had served aboard the vessel for two years, said that the Alaska Ranger went slowly through the ice and
that he was not aware of any harsh encounters.
Clashing roles?
Gwen Rains, a federal fishery observer for the past two years, gave a different perspective. She alleged that a captain
risked getting fired if he defied a fish master.
"The fish master runs the boat — they just do ... on some of the vessels," testified Rains, who also survived the sinking.
Fishing Company of Alaska challenged Rains' competence to weigh such relationships, since she is not a licensed officer
of a vessel.
The Alaska Ranger's final voyage began from Unalaska on March 22. There were no reports of ice in the water, and a 30to 36-hour trip lay ahead to fish for mackerel in the Bering Sea.
"It was a full-bore steam, so it was a rough ... ride on the way out, that's for sure," Freitag said.
About 2 a.m. the next day, the alarm sounded for flooding in the stern.
Several witnesses said that in the half-hour before abandoning ship, they saw Konno with his survival suit partially on,
smoking a cigarette and appearing unusually calm for his position in the wheelhouse of a fishing vessel about to sink.
Konno is the one crewman whose body was not recovered. One crewman testified that he probably went down with the
ship.
Staff reporter Jonathan Martin contributed to this report. Hal Bernton: 206-464-2580 or hbernton@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company.
Observer: Several doors on Alaska Ranger were in poor shape
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgibin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2004318882&zsection_id=2003925728&slug=apwstalaskaabandonedship2ndldwritethru&
date=20080401
A fisheries observer testified Monday in a hearing into the deadly sinking of the Alaska Ranger that several doors on the
fishing vessel were in poor condition, the Coast Guard said.
Gwen Rains, who contracts with the National Marine Fisheries Service, noted that the industrial latch was loose on one
door and the seals were frayed on another, although none were responsible for the flooding.
Rains also said mate David Silveira, whose body was recovered by rescuers, did not like how the Ranger was built.
She said she also thought the emergency drills onboard could have been more thoroughly communicated to the crew.
The crew simply talked through the drills, rather than walk through them, as is the practice on other vessels, Rains said.
Coast Guard officials in charge of the public hearing in this town 800 miles southwest of Anchorage also asked witnesses
about whether they had seen alcohol and drugs on board the vessel in the Bering Sea.
"The survivors who testified today said they'd never seen drugs or alcohol on board," said Coast Guard spokeswoman
Sarah Francis.
The hearing is supposed to move to Anchorage later this week, Francis said, before continuing in Seattle, where the
Alaska Ranger was based.
Also Monday, investigators examined some of the survival suits recovered from the 42 rescued crew members.
Five men, including the captain, died in the Easter Sunday sinking in one of Alaska's worst fishing accidents in recent
memory.
Pair Flown by Coast Guard Following ATV Accident
By Josh Farley
Monday, March 31, 2008
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/mar/31/pair-flown-by-coast-guard-following-atv-accident/?printer=1/
A 29-year-old that was injured on an ATV near Lake Tarboo had to be flown by helicopter to a hospital Friday, according to the Coast
Guard.
The 29-year-old and his daughter were apparently riding an ATV in a heavily wooded area before 1 p.m. Jefferson County medics
called for the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard because the area was so dense with woods the father and daughter needed to be
hoisted by helicopter out of the region, the Coast Guard said.
A helicopter crew from Coast Guard's Air Station Port Angeles lifted the man out and flew him to the closest hospital, though
Coast Guard officials in Seattle didn't receive word on which one. The daughter was lifted out as well, but transported to a clearing
where an Airlift Northwest helicopter transported her to the same hospital, the coast guard said.
The condition of the father and daughter is not known by Coast Guard officials.
Injunction Sought On Sea Lion Killings In Oregon
March 31, 2008 2:15 p.m. EST
Jupiter Kalambakal - AHN News Writer
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010493078
Portland, OR (AHN)-- Local conservationist groups are exhausting legal measures to deter the killing of sea lions feasting
on salmon at the Bonneville Dam.
The Humane Society of the United States filed a motion before a U.S. District Court on Friday seeking a permanent
injunction. If the request is denied, the group said it would likely seek a temporary restraining order to be effective before
Friday--when the capture of sea lions begins.
Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife will spearhead the sea lion eradication campaign beginning in April.
In January, the National Marine Fisheries Service gave permission to game managers in Washington and Oregon to start
killing sea lions feeding on dwindling populations of migrating salmon near the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.
The federal agency has decided that the sea lions are eating more than their share of endangered salmon by staking out
the entrance to the fish ladders to catch unsuspecting schooling fish.
The states are allowed to kill up to 85 sea lions a year in the area until the feeding frenzy abates. The order encourages
capturing the animals if possible and finding homes for them in aquariums and ocean theme parks, but said they can be
culled after 48 hours if no homes are found.
Sea lions are protected under the 1972 Marine Mammals Protection Act. Populations have soared since then.
The sea lion population, once as low as around 1,000 during the 1930s. is thought to number about 240,000 today.
Seattle's plans for future shaped by climate change still in infancy
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Last updated 7:39 a.m. PT
By KRISTEN MILLARES YOUNG
P-I REPORTER
The Port of Seattle's Harbor Island, mostly underwater at high tide in 2100.
Fish -- rather than crows and gulls -- pecking at the port's largest terminal.
Climate change will make Washington a warmer and wetter place, even while shrinking the snow packs that supply us with drinking
water and salmon with robust streams. In Seattle, scientists say, the future holds water -- and lots of it -- with the rising of Puget
Sound.
The University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group, tapped by the state to lend its expertise to climate change policy, predicted in
January that sea levels in Puget Sound could rise by as much as 50 inches by 2100.
That's a worst-case scenario with grim economic repercussions.
It's enough to threaten large swaths of more than $1 billion in waterfront investments that the port has made in the past decade. And
it's more than 3 feet above the sea-level rise that could be handled by the planned Alaskan Way sea wall's replacement.
Many have focused on how climate change is affected by transportation, which in 2004 was responsible for 45 percent of
Washington's greenhouse gas emissions.
But a March report by the National Research Council turned the tables. It showed that across the U.S., ports and other transportation
infrastructure -- the backbone of the trade economy -- would be among the hardest hit by climate change.
With so much at stake, what is being done?
Currently, the focus is on mitigation, or lessening the amounts of greenhouse gases produced. Scrambling back from the edge, so to
speak -- even as some say the die has been cast because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for more than a century.
Planning for a future shaped by climate change, however, is in its infancy.
The Port of Seattle, along with its neighboring ports in Tacoma and Everett, produced an inventory of maritime emissions in this
region that included greenhouse gases. The Puget Sound ports came up with a voluntary maritime emissions-reduction plan, but their
focus has been on diesel soot -- created by burning diesel fuel -- because of the cancer and asthma risks they present.
Locally in 2005, "the maritime industry as a whole produced 28 percent of (the region's) diesel particulate matter but only 2.6 percent
of greenhouse gases, which was part of the reason our focus was most immediately on the diesel emissions," said Stephanie Jones, the
Port of Seattle's senior manager of seaport environmental programs.
Much of what the seaports encourage does address greenhouse gas emissions tangentially, such as reducing engine idling and making
operations more efficient. And it improves the bottom line, which helps get businesses on board. Some of it costs both the port and its
partners, such as providing infrastructure for cruise ships to plug into the city's power grid rather than running their engines while at
dock.
Other costs are borne by the private sector, such as switching to burning low-sulfur fuels while at dock, as APL and "K" Line did last
year, or using a biodiesel blend to fuel cargo handling equipment, as SSA Marine did at Harbor Island's Terminal 18.
"We look at climate change in two halves, the first of which is what we can do to prevent our contributions to it," Jones said. "The
second half is what we can do to adapt."
The port, submerged, is the second half.
No easy answers
Waterborne commerce built the communities along Puget Sound. But as forests fell and the cities grew, hills were leveled and their
soil piled up to extend downtowns into the bays. Development clustered along the creeping coastline.
Now that coastline is threatening to creep back. Standing in its way are major commercial and industrial waterfronts such as those of
Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia, and major supporting urban infrastructure as well as private property.
"We don't have the answers yet," Jones said. "You can't build a gate across the front of Elliott Bay."
Just a 2-foot rise in sea levels -- 2 inches beyond the upper bounds of the UW predictions for 2050 -- would inundate 56 square miles
and affect at least 44,429 people, according to a state study that identified the area between Tacoma and Olympia as among the first
that would be affected.
A recent state report found that "sea level rise will trigger an impulse by property owners and managers to 'protect' shorelines through
armoring or diking." Such responses will make it more difficult for the coast-wide recovery: "Additional armoring directly threatens
the ability of beaches and supporting shoreline processes to adapt to sea level rise" -- and removes critical habitat for a host of species,
some of which are iconic for Washington, such as salmon.
That led a group advising the state -- composed of state officials and local governments, as well as tribal, business and academic
leaders -- to "discourage or preclude additional armoring whenever alternatives exist."
Sometimes there may be little choice than to build up the coastline's armor.
Downtown Seattle is protected by the aging Alaskan Way sea wall, whose 1.4-mile length is due to be replaced at a likely cost of
between $600 million and $800 million, said John Arnesen of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
The plan calls for a replacement of the sea wall, which can accommodate an 11-inch rise in the sea level, Arnesen said. He added that
the city plan would be based on the best scientific data available when construction begins as early as 2012.
The complex future interplay of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, rising global temperatures, the expansion of the
ocean as it warms, melting ice sheets and shifting earth crusts provides planners with a range of predictions for rising sea levels in the
Puget Sound region by 2100. The UW's January study estimated a rise of between 6 and 50 inches.
The study identified the most likely sea-level rise as 6 inches by 2050 and 13 inches by 2100, but regardless of where the actual sea
level is, other factors could push it up.
The particular threat is not just from inundation in a linear fashion, but from the increase in intensity from storms and increased
flooding, said Ed Miles, the team leader of the UW Climate Impacts Group. Miles said storms now considered once-in-a-lifetime
events will happen more often, possibly driving waves over Washington's coastal protections.
By 2100, major sections of the ports of Seattle and Tacoma are within coastal flood zones according to mid-range UW sea-level
predictions; nearly all of the seaports are engulfed by the flood zones in their upper range projections.
The Port of Tacoma is raising the wharves it has in development to 22 feet above the mean low tide, which would clear the UW's
highest sea- level rise predictions for 2100 by more than 3 feet.
"Commercial forces will drive these redevelopments before climate change will," said Port of Tacoma Chief Sustainable Development
Officer Lou Paulsen. Seattle port staffers said they would also plan for sea-level rises when their terminals come up for
redevelopment.
Taking rising sea levels into account when planning infrastructure is foremost amongst the recommendations made to the governor by
the state report, which proposed revisions to the growth and shoreline management acts as well as its environmental review process.
The report also states "it is vital that state and local governments avoid putting facilities and residences into relatively undeveloped
areas that are at significant risk to sea level rise."
Questioning whether or not to build in the face of rising seas is already happening in Olympia, the city worst hit by rising sea levels.
Olympia's port peninsula is built on fill at low elevations, making it "vulnerable to substantial flooding" even under the UW's more
conservative projections. City officials decided to relocate their planned City Hall from an area expected to be inundated, but are in
negotiations to locate a children's museum on what is now port property in the projected flood zone.
Rick Dougherty, Olympia's project manager of the City Hall and children's museum locations, said the city is planning to raise the
museum to anticipate rising waters. He noted that the neighboring sewage treatment plant, which serves Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater
and Thurston County and, like the West Point Treatment Plant in Magnolia, could be threatened by wind-driven waves and storm
surge, and the cost of relocating it could be $1 billion.
"It's going to be a big topic for a long time to come," Dougherty said.
Olympia's officials have said they would deal with the seas as a community rather than on a case-by-case basis.
"Adapting to climate change becomes a question of resources and risk tolerance," UW Climate Impacts Group policy specialist Lara
Whitely Binder said. "How much are we willing to pay to preserve certain uses of coastal areas?"
It's not just the communities, but also the roads, rails and bridges that connect them that are also threatened by rising seas and surging
storms.
"Inundation would affect our highways, but also erosion and landslides could be catastrophic," said Nancy Boyd, the state Department
of Transportation's deputy state design engineer.
Boyd said the Transportation Department is in the earliest stages of conducting an inventory of existing infrastructure.
What needs money, how to allocate the funds and when to decide to pull back from development are all questions to be answered
through community planning, said Whitely Binder.
If ice cap melting accelerates, sea levels could rise even higher -- complicating long-term planning. "There's always going to be a
coastline," Whitely Binder said. "It's just a matter of where it is."