Teen survives days clinging to capsized skiff in Bering Sea; two relatives found dead

A 15-year-old boy was rescued Monday afternoon after spending several days clinging to a capsized 18-foot skiff in the Bering Sea, while two other people aboard the boat — his older brother, who was piloting the vessel, and a cousin — were found dead in the water nearby, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The three had left the Siberian Yupik village of Savoonga, on the northern coast of St. Lawrence Island, Friday evening for a halibut fishing trip and were due back around 3 a.m. Sunday. When they did not return, Alaska State Troopers were notified around 2:30 p.m. Sunday and alerted the Coast Guard roughly six hours later, at 8:30 p.m. Poor weather over the Bering Strait kept search aircraft grounded overnight, and crews were not able to begin flying until Monday morning.

The numbers

The boat covered roughly 40 miles of open water before it overturned about four miles east of St. Lawrence Island, which itself sits more than 160 miles west of Nome and closer to Russia than to the Alaska mainland. A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules crew from Air Station Kodiak spotted the teenager clinging to the hull at approximately 3 p.m. Monday, roughly two full days after the boat had capsized, according to a national account of the rescue. He was showing symptoms of hypothermia but was conscious. Two other occupants of the boat were recovered unresponsive from the water nearby. All three were eventually brought to shore aboard a nearby fishing vessel, the Northwest Explorer, which reached Nome early Tuesday morning.

A dangerous stretch of water

St. Lawrence Island, home to roughly 1,400 residents split between the villages of Savoonga and Gambell, sits in one of the more exposed stretches of the Bering Sea, where small, open skiffs are the primary means of hunting and fishing and where sudden weather changes can strand or capsize boats far from shore. Search and rescue operations in the region routinely depend on a mix of Coast Guard aircraft, Alaska Air National Guard rescue squadrons, state troopers and local vessels, because the distances involved and harsh conditions make land-based response difficult. Water temperatures in the Bering Sea in early September typically hover in the low-to-mid 40s Fahrenheit, a range in which hypothermia and unconsciousness can set in within a few hours for someone immersed, making the teenager's multi-day survival notable to responders, Alaska's largest newspaper reported as the search began. Villages on St. Lawrence Island have no road connection to each other or to the mainland, so hunting and fishing crews rely on small aluminum or fiberglass skiffs for trips that can stretch tens of miles across open water, often with little advance warning if fog, wind or current shift suddenly.

Who is affected

The dead have not been formally identified by officials, but family members told a local television station's report on the outcome that the boat's captain — the survivor's older brother — became trapped beneath the hull when it flipped, while the cousin, who initially survived alongside the teenager, died sometime after the first night in the water. The losses have rippled through Savoonga, a village of about 800 people where extended families and subsistence hunting and fishing crews overlap closely. The Bering Strait School District said it was sending an additional counselor to the village from nearby Gambell to support students, and said it was coordinating with Norton Sound Health Corporation's behavioral health team, which already had staff on site. A spokesperson for the health corporation said weather would be a factor in getting additional staff to the island, according to the newspaper's follow-up reporting on the community response.

Reaction

Coast Guard officials emphasized both the loss and the outcome of the search in public remarks after crews suspended the operation Monday.

"Our hearts go out to the families, friends, and communities affected by the tragic loss of these two mariners."

Rear Adm. Bob Little, commander of the Coast Guard's Arctic District, also credited the crew of the Northwest Explorer and state, local and village first responders for the rescue that was completed. Adam White, the captain of the Northwest Explorer, described waiting for the aircrew's response as "the longest four hours ever" and said of the teenager, "That is one remarkably tough kid, is all I can say," according to public radio's account of the rescue, drawing on Coast Guard statements. A Coast Guard spokesman said there was no active investigation into the cause of the capsizing and that officials could not speculate on the exact timing of what went wrong, a detail also confirmed by Nome's public radio station.

What happens next

The Coast Guard has closed its search-and-rescue response, and no additional victims are believed to be missing. Formal identification of the two deceased will fall to Alaska State Troopers and the state medical examiner's office, a process that in rural Alaska can take days given the logistics of transporting remains from small island communities. The Bering Strait School District's counseling response in Savoonga is expected to continue in the coming days, and behavioral health providers from Norton Sound Health Corporation are being rotated in as weather permits. Because the incident did not involve a licensed or inspected commercial vessel, it is not expected to trigger a formal National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the kind that follows commercial maritime casualties; any review of the capsizing's cause would likely rest with Alaska State Troopers.