Bering Sea

A Coast Guard helicopter crashed into the Bering Sea with 10 people aboard while conducting a rescue after a disabled freighter grounded on an island in southwestern Alaska. The Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley picked up four of the 10 people. Six were unaccounted for, the Coast Guard said. The Selendang Ayu, a 738-foot freighter loaded with soybeans and 440,000 gallons of fuel, broke in two when it ran aground on Unalaska Island in the Aleutian chain, the Coast Guard said.

Simply keeping a back door closed would likely have saved the Arctic Rose, a fishing vessel that sank in the Bering Sea nearly three years ago, killing all 15 people on board, a Coast Guard report concluded. But the ill-trained, inexperienced crew frequently tied the door open to let fresh air into the boat's fish-processing area, investigators said. Most likely, that door was open early on the morning of April 2, 2001, and 20-foot waves began crashing through it.

A crewman was swept overboard Tuesday from a ship searching for survivors of an explosion and fire on a fishing vessel in the Bering Sea, and became the third person missing in the frigid water. The man was aboard the Clipper Express, a 138-foot Seattle-based vessel that on Sunday had rescued two people swimming in survival suits after they abandoned a burning fishing vessel.

Coast Guard investigators confirmed Wednesday that they have located the wreckage of a fishing boat that sank in the Bering Sea in April with 15 people aboard. The crew searching for the Arctic Rose got a brief view of the vessel Wednesday before the remotely operated vehicle transmitting pictures got tangled in lines. The cable controlling the $100,000 search vehicle snapped, and it was lost under 450 feet of water alongside the Arctic Rose.

Kate Wynne peers through an illuminated magnifying glass at the bits of digested salmon bones, gills, teeth and shrimp shells extracted from a pile of Steller sea lion dung. The sample provides a snapshot of what one sea lion chose to eat on one particular winter day from what was available in the waters around Kodiak. "There's a pretty big difference, both regionally and seasonally, in what they're eating," said Wynne, a marine mammal biologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The Aleutian natives have a name for this place: "The shores where the sea breaks its back." Outside the harbor, where snow falls on uneasy gray waters, is where the Bering Sea winds up its throwing arm. To know the Bering Sea in winter is to believe in the malevolence of water.

Two crewmen were dead and 13 were missing after a U.S. fishing vessel vanished in the icy Bering Sea in what could be Alaska's worst fishing disaster, the Coast Guard said. The Arctic Rose, a 92-foot boat harvesting rock sole, sank in rough seas about 200 miles northwest of St. Paul Island, about 850 miles southwest of Anchorage. The Coast Guard received emergency signals from the vessel at 3:30 a.m. and sent a search plane, a helicopter and rescue ships. The C-130 aircraft arrived at 8:30 a.m.

A hand-lettered sign outside the old seal-skinning warehouse where they sell beer reads: "Will open after Father is done walking around. Listen on channel VHF #9 for an announcement. Thanks." Signed, "Tribal Office." The occasion was a Russian holiday called St.

The young whale that beached itself on the shore near Malibu died from a "systemic infection," and a more specific cause might never be found, the head of a team of biologists who performed a preliminary necropsy reported Monday. "It had a systemic infection, and the liver . . . was pale in color and had irregular lumps," said John Heyning, a whale biologist who is deputy director of research and collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.