The U.S. Coast Guard called off the search on Friday for a missing fishing boat. The 43-foot commercial geoduck clam dive boat Canis Majoris went missing on Thursday just north of Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. The Coast Guard picked up an emergency radio transmission from the vessel around 6:30 that evening.
Petty Officer John Hightower said they scanned the area with the Coast Guard cutter John McCormick, a 45-foot fast response boat dispatched from Ketchikan, and a Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Sitka doing flyovers. According to Hightower, they searched for approximately 25 hours before calling it off.
“They have a large number of factors that they take into account to determine the survivability of the person that’s being searched for,” said Hightower. “So they use all those factors to determine the optimal survivability of the missing person and how long it would be reasonable to search for them before shifting into a recovery position.”
Hightower said the Coast Guard believes only one person was aboard the boat when it disappeared.
“Its estimated that it was only the owner/operator,” he said over the phone. “Next of kin were contacted, and all the possible or suggested crew members and deckhands for the vessel were all contacted and they were confirmed to not be on the vessel.”
Canis Majoris is registered in the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission database to a Ketchikan man named David Klein. Alaska State Troopers listed Klein as a missing person on Saturday.
Hightower said when they received the distress signal on Thursday night, they alerted the Alaska Marine Highway System’s ferry Hubbard, which was nearby in Clarence Strait en route to Juneau.
AMHS spokesman Sam Dapcevich told the Ketchikan Daily News that the Hubbard didn’t have passengers aboard at the time. She was headed to Juneau to resume service after an overhaul at Ketchikan’s Vigor shipyard. Dapcevich told the paper that the ferry sent crew on a speedboat to the site of the distress call. They found a life raft and floating debris but no survivors. The weather got worse and the ferry crew had to return to safety.
The Coast Guard urged anyone with information on Klein or the Canis Majoris to contact Ketchikan Troopers at 907-225-5118 or the regional Coast Guard Southeast Alaska Command Center at 907-463-2980.
