Disabled vessel towed to Aleutian island

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, January 18, 2007

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A fish processing vessel that lost its propulsion after an engine room fire was towed into an Aleutian island fishing port Thursday afternoon.

The Seattle-based Stellar Sea, carrying a crew of 142, arrived at Dutch Harbor about 3:20 p.m., towed by two tug boats. Crew members watched from the stern as the ship neared the dock.

None of the crew was injured in the fire that broke out onboard the 316-foot vessel Tuesday night. The blaze was extinguished in about an hour, Coast Guard officials said.

The fire left the Stellar Sea without power or propulsion about 90 miles north of Dutch Harbor, 800 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The Coast Guard dispatched the cutter Mellon to assist the vessel. The cutter took the Stellar Sea under tow until the commercial tug boats finished the job.

With relatively calm seas, weather was not a problem, Petty Officer Eric Chandler said.

“The weather was extremely mild for this time of year,” he said.

The boat was headed from Seattle to tiny St. Paul Island, 275 miles north of the Aleutian chain.

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Rita Davis, the foreman on the Stellar Sea, said that even though there were no injuries, people onboard did have to take emergency precautions.

“We had to don our survival suits, but our crew and engineers and everyone onboard were able to contain the fire,” she said.

The Coast Guard’s local marine safety detachment planned to examine the vessel Thursday evening and conduct mandatory drug and alcohol testing on the crew.

With the Stellar Sea sidelined, the Bering Sea seafood industry faces an uncertain season – particularly in the opilio crab harvest.

“If they can turn it around in two weeks, I don’t think it’s going to have any major impact,” seafood analyst John Sackton said. “But if it’s out for longer than that, that will have an impact, and there will have to be some adjustment.”

The vessel is under contract with Seattle-based processor Peter Pan Seafoods Inc., and was supposed to process most of the crab from the northern area of the fishery this year. Seattle-based Trident Seafoods Corp. has a floating processor working in the Bering Sea, but that vessel is currently processing cod.