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CNN Saturday Morning News
Cause of Arctic Rose's Sinking Remains a Mystery
Aired March 30, 2002 - 09:18 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's been a year since the sinking of the fishing vessel Arctic Rose in the icy waters of the Bering Sea and the coast of Alaska.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: But the mystery surrounding what may be the worst fishing boat disaster in modern history has yet to be solved. This week, "CNN PRESENTS" takes an in-depth look at that story, and Frank Buckley has a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It happened in the dead of night, 10:00 p.m. April 1, 2001. The Arctic Rose was at work 200 miles from the nearest port. The 92-foot fishing trawler radioed her sister ship, the Alaskan Rose, fishing just a few miles away.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: The captain on the vessel the Arctic Rose had mentioned something about the sump pumps, and that they had made some repairs to those. I think he was a little upset about things, but everything was fixed, and it was working fine.
BUCKLEY: What the captain didn't know was the Arctic Rose was just hours away from disaster.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: At 3:30 in the morning on April 2, the Coast Guard received the first e-perb (ph) signal from the satellites that are orbiting the earth.
BUCKLEY: The e-perb, a device that automatically flashes a distress call signaling a satellite when a vessel goes down.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: So then they started their communications attempts with the vessel at sea, using the radio, sending e-mails. But there was no call backs, and they never heard from the vessel.
BUCKLEY: A Coast Guard search and rescue team scrambled to the scene, but it would be hours before it arrived.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: Took us about three hours to get on scene due to 70- to 100-knot headwinds.
BUCKLEY: As the C-130 approached, it made radio contact with the first mate steering the Alaskan Rose, the nearby sister ship of the Arctic Rose.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: Mr. Nelson was the mate, and he was on watch all night and received the first contact from the C- 130 that there was problems. He turned the vessel around, awoke the captain and told him that the Arctic Rose was in trouble.
BUCKLEY: With little information to go on, the Coast Guard was faced with the daunting task of finding a 92-foot boat in a sea roughly three times the size of the state of Texas.
UNIDENTIFIED COAST GUARD OFFICER: We only have a 406 e-perb position. We have no other information to go on where this vessel might be. The Alaskan Rose skipper came on the radio. He was very upbeat. When he reported that there was debris, I heard a significant change in his tone. He reported that he has located a couple bats, some floating garbage, and a floating crate. We could now pinpoint a location. Now we have an accident.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BUCKLEY: And the magnitude of the loss from that accident became clear within a couple of days of the Arctic Rose going down. All hands lost, all 15 men aboard that fishing vessel were killed when it went down about a year ago.
Also left behind, investigators from the Coast Guard who were determined to find out exactly what went wrong and why. Their hope is that they can make recommendations that will help to prevent or at least reduce the number of future such accidents in the future -- Miles and Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Frank, why do this story now? Did you uncover some new information or come across something?
BUCKLEY: It was the fact that the magnitude of the loss here. This was something that is the worst fishing -- commercial fishing vessel disaster in 50 years, and the question really goes to the Coast Guard. This was a rare marine board of investigation. They occasionally convene these boards to investigate fishing vessel disasters, but some 70 fishermen die every year in various fishing vessel accidents.
They felt that this was important enough to convene this marine board. They also felt that it was important enough to take the rare step of sending down two ROVs down 428 feet below sea level in the Bering Sea to see exactly what happened.
They now sense that it was probably something that was related to a watertight door that was left open, and water may have insidiously come in, it may have come in with a rogue wave.
But really, it was because of the magnitude of the loss. And we were out there in the Bering Sea last summer looking at his, and it was really an extraordinary experience. You also get a sense of what the lives are of these fishermen. We went to a place called Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Island chain, and this is where the fishermen go, some 800 miles away from Alaska, out in the middle of nowhere.
And these people leave their families for months at a time, and they just don't know if they're going to be back at the end of that fishing trip.
O'BRIEN: All right, Frank Buckley, we look forward to seeing that program -- tonight or tomorrow night? Is it tonight?
BUCKLEY: It's supposed to be...
O'BRIEN: Tomorrow night, tomorrow.
BUCKLEY: ... it'll be tomorrow night, "CNN PRESENTS."
O'BRIEN: All right, Frank Buckley, and we will be watching that for the full story of "The Mystery of the Arctic Rose," tune in to "CNN PRESENTS," and that is tomorrow night, which would be Sunday, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. Pacific.
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