Investigator is Convinced Hull Damage Sank the Arctic Rose, the Worst Fishing Casualty in 50 Years
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Seattle Times] by Hal Bernton - July 20, 2015
In 2001, a remote-operated camera on the bottom of the Bering Sea captured ghostly images of the sunken Arctic Rose fishing vessel, including footage of a narrow, dark splotch along the hull.
Could this be a clue to what happened to the Seattle-based vessel and its entire crew of 15 in the worst loss of life in the U.S. fishing industry in the past half century?
Coast Guard officers who investigated the April 2, 2001, sinking eventually concluded that the video showed only an area of peeled paint, and was of no consequence in a calamity they say was most likely the result of flooding through an open hatch door.
But a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator initially assigned to the case came to a radically different view of what went wrong; this theory was never publicly disclosed.
Bob Ford, the former investigator, is convinced the video shows a gash in the hull...
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