Key Takeaways:
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FV Katmai was a large fishing vessel. It operated in the Bering Sea.
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The sinking of the Katmai Deadliest Catch was in October 2008. A massive storm overtook the ship. This caused it to sink.
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There were 11 people on board at the time. Just 4 survived the accident.
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The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the Katmai. The agency looked at reports. It also looked at evidence to determine what occurred.
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They found that the boat was overloaded. It also noted that the boat took on water because of the failure to shut a watertight door. That failure allowed water to enter the hull.
The Katmai sinking will long be a story that tells a tragedy. It’s also likely to be a story of a boat that didn’t have to sink. If it had been properly managed, then it wouldn’t have. For anyone who has learned of the Katmai Deadliest Catch saga knows that the Bering Sea is an unforgivable location. The intense storms. The incredible work that crew members had to do. It all amounted to dangerous conditions for those on board the Katmai boat.
What is FV Katmai?
The FV Katmai was a 93-foot fishing vessel. The fishing boat sought prized Alaskan cod. This was done for numerous years. The boat sank in October of 2008. It was near the Aleutian Islands.
The boat was traveling through the Amchitka Pass. That’s about 120 miles to the west of Adak. That is when the boat went down. The loss of the vessel was blamed on doors located on the main deck being left open in a storm. That move let too much water into the processing space. The result was the loss of life for seven people.
The FV Katmai was never directly on Deadliest Catch, a very popular reality TV show centered around the treacherous conditions of the Alaska fishing industry. The vessel may not have been on the show. But it was doing the same type of work as the many vessels on it. That brought a lot of attention to this ship.
Full Details On FV Katmai Sink & 7 Crew Members Died:
The story of the FV Katmai is a sad one. It may have been preventable. This was a tragedy. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident. Numerous claims came in. Rumors started about it. Seven people died in the accident.
The vessel was carrying 11 crew. 11 people at the time of the accident. It was carrying a large load of cod and moving towards port at Dutch Harbor. That is about 800 miles to the southwest of Anchorage. Every crew member was from the area. That includes Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.
The Katmai ran into trouble on a Wednesday evening. Initially, it wasn’t clear how such a large and modern boat could sink. The Coast Guard received an email from another boat that said the Katmai lost steering at some point. They alerted the Coast Guard. The Katmai was also taking on water in an enclosed area of the stern.
The Coast Guard received a signal. This was from the Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon. This beacon only activates when a vessel is submerged.
The Coast Guard received word of the concern. Search teams flew to the area from Kodiak. They were able to rescue four people. They dropped two life rafts into the water. At the time, the water was horribly cold. It was unsurvivable at just 43 degrees. The Coast Guard got to those four in time. They were said to be okay.
The conditions surrounding the incident were tough. Waves were reaching as high as 17 feet. Winds were blowing at 34 miles per hour. It was raining and snowing at the time. There’s no doubt the conditions were horrible. That could mean that the weather played the most important part in why the ship went down. But that’s not all that seems to have happened.
Katmai Fisheries owned and operated the fishing vessel at the time of the accident. A full investigation would be necessary to determine what really happened and why the vessel went down.
The investigation centered around the information provided by the four people who survived the accident. The vessel was heading toward Alaska with as much as 120,000 pounds of frozen cod in its hull. That’s when the severe storm hit. The captain lost steering. Then, the boat started taking on water right before midnight. The crew learned of the water and the skipper called for the evacuation of the boat right away.
The results were devastating. The ship went down. It is believed 1 of the 11 people on board went down with the ship. Six others were lost when the two life rafts rolled due to the intense seas. The Coast Guard recovered the other four over 15 hours after the vessel sank.
NTSB Issues Final Report on FV KATMAI’S:
The National Transportation Safety Board set out to find out what happened. It was determined that the boat has a number of big risk factors. That includes stability problems that made it unable to handle the intense storms common on the Bering Sea. The board had inspected the vessel within the prior two years, as is expected. However, it had not investigated the structural soundness of the hull itself.
The board believed that the sinking was due to the lack of watertight doors being shut. That’s a job that one of the crew members should have completed. And, the vessel had nearly twice the amount of weight in cod that it should have been carrying. That is 60,000 pounds more than what the boat should have had to remain stable. Additionally, the board found that there was a failure of the owner of the vessel to communicate critical information to the master on how to keep the boat stable. That failure may have prevented the incident.
Final Words:
The fishing vessel Katmai did what many other ships in the area do. It took on the intense Bering Sea to capture the cod so loved by consumers. The result was tragic. 11 people suffered a traumatic experience. Only four survived. The causes were preventable.
