marine board report - Off Soundings

The vessel was equipped with an ACR Electronics, Inc., 406 MHz EPIRB, serial number –
0735/1999 and model number RLB-32. The expiration date of the EPIRB battery was
November 2005. The EPIRB was properly registered with NOAA with the current data on file.
Most of the safety equipment aboard the ARCTIC ROSE functioned properly. The EPIRB
deployed and emitted a signal, which was received by the orbiting satellite. The signal was then
forwarded to the land station and sent via phone line to the Command Center in Juneau, Alaska
alerting the watchstanders. The vessel’s inflatable liferaft did deploy and was found in an
upright condition (although it was empty). The vessel’s two ring buoys were never located.
Captain Rundall’s body was located within the debris field in a properly donned immersion suit.
The immersion suit was full of water. The immersion suits were stowed in a wooden box at the
port side of the pilothouse level on the weather deck (see Figure 6). Seven empty immersion
suits were recovered by the vessels on scene, all of which were found out of their storage bags.
6. TRAWLING AND PROCESSING OPERATIONS
The ARCTIC ROSE was a stern trawler targeting the non-limited entry permit bottom fisheries
(e.g., Pacific Cod, Rex Sole, Flathead Sole, Yellowfin Sole, and other bottom dwellers). The
crew would deploy the trawl net to the ocean floor dragging the bottom for several hours at a
time. When the operator felt the drag increase or reached the time limit for fishing, the net was
retrieved. The cables were retrieved and spooled on winches located aft of the pilothouse on the
weather deck. The net was hauled aboard the vessel through the stern ramp and spooled on the
net reel mounted within the “A” frame gantry. The cod end was hauled up the stern ramp and
pulled into the dump box arrangement. The cod end was manipulated through the use of gilson
winches and placed within the dump box. When the cod end was in place, the deckhands would
attach a gilson line to the aft door of the dump box, lift the door into place and latch it shut. The
cod end would be unzipped to empty the catch into the dump box. The hydraulically operated
sliding chute on the aft bulkhead of the processing space could then be opened and the fish
manually pushed into the live bin within the processing space where the catch was sorted by
species. The by-catch (undesirable species) were placed on a conveyor belt and discarded
through an overboard chute on the starboard side of the processing space. A separate conveyor
belt carried the target species to the deheading machine. Once deheaded, the fish moved via
conveyor belt to the cleaning area where they were cleaned of all viscera and blood. The head
and guts were discarded through an overboard chute on the port side. Cleaned fish were sorted,
placed onto trays, and inserted into one of the three plate freezers. After three to four hours in a
freezer, the frozen fish were put into paper bags referred to as fiber. The bags of fish were
marked and dropped into the cargo hold via the manhole access in the deck hatch to be stacked.
7. THE CASUALTY
a. Departure from Dutch Harbor. The vessel topped off fuel on March 22, taking on 10,580
gals of fuel and an unknown quantity of water from Offshore Industry Systems. On March
28, 2001 the ARCTIC ROSE departed Captains Bay, Unalaska, Alaska with a fifteen man
crew. Prior to calling on the port of St. Paul, the crew made several trawls in the Bering Sea
in an area known as the Slime Banks that produced a small amount of yellow fin sole.
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