Fatal Mistake: Crab Boat's Crew Viewed It as a 'Battleship'

Being a commercial fisherman is one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation, with more than 800 deaths logged between 2000 and 2020, along with another 164 missing. A story at the Guardian brings home that truth with a harrowing look at the last voyage of the Scandies Rose out of Kodiak, Alaska, on December 30, 2019. The weather was already bad when the crew of seven set out for the Bering Sea, but "the boat's a battleship—we go through the weather," deckhand Dean Gribble would later recount. As it turns out, Gribble would be one of only two to survive. By New Year's Eve, the vessel was battling hurricane-force winds and accumulating ice—including on the boat's 200 crab pots, which can add thousands of pounds of weight.

The boat developed a slight list, but nothing the crew hadn't seen before. Then the Scandies Rose suddenly rolled hard. Gribble and another deckhand, Jon Lawler, scrambled to get survival suits on as the boat began to capsize. "I knew in my head we were dying," Gribble said. The two made it into a life raft, but the rest of the crew vanished with the boat. Eventually, Gribble and Lawler were spotted and pulled from the raft, coated in ice but alive.

The National Transportation Safety Board later determined that the boat's crab pots were stacked too high, and its report faulted "inaccurate stability instructions for the vessel." A Coast Guard report also criticized the captain for not raising an alarm to the crew earlier than he did. Read the full story, which also explores gaps in the safety culture among those in the industry: life jackets, for example, are mandatory to have on board, but many opt not to wear them on the job.