yacht sinking off washington coast

Photos: 7 rescued from yacht taking on water off Washington coast

SEATTLE (AP) — The Coast Guard says its crews rescued seven people over the weekend after a large yacht took on water and became disabled 25 miles (40 kilometers) off the Washington coast.

Workers at Coast Guard Sector Columbia River command center received a radio call from the crew of the 143-foot (44-meter) vessel at 6 a.m. Saturday, The U.S. Coast Guard said in a news release Monday.

The crew said the yacht was taking on water because they couldn’t get the transom door at the back of the yacht to close. The yacht crew members also said they engaged the engine room fire suppression system after seeing smoke, which disabled the vessel.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Astoria, lifeboat crews from Station Grays Harbor and Station Quillayute River, and a 210-foot medium endurance cutter were sent to the yacht for evacuations and towing.

No medical concerns and no pollution from the yacht were reported.

The cutter arrived that afternoon to tow the yacht toward the Strait of Juan De Fuca entrance where the tow would be passed to a commercial salvage company. That process took nearly 24 hours, according to the Coast Guard.

The commercial tug was scheduled to tow the yacht to a shipyard in Port Angeles for repairs.

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Coast Guard rescues 3 from sinking boat off Washington coast

by KOMO News Staff

SEATTLE -- Three men were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after their boat sank off Washington coast Saturday afternoon.

Coast Guard crews received an emergency call for help around 2:40 p.m. from a man reporting their 48-foot boat was taking on water about 5 miles off the coast of La Push and was starting to sink.

A rescue boat was launched from the Quillayute River Coast Guard Station an arrived 30 minutes later to find the boat had sunk and three men floating amid the leftover debris; none of the men in lifejackets, officials said.

Two men were pulled into the boat but the third was having trouble staying afloat and one of the Coast Guard crewmembers had to go into the water to bring him to safety.

The crew brought the three back to La Push where an ambulance was waiting to take them to a Forks hospital. Officials said all three men were showing signs of hypothermia but their exact conditions were not given.

Meanwhile, the boat sank with several hundred gallons of fuel on board and crews are still investigating whether there is any potential environmental damage. A Coast Guard helicopter was sent to the scene to look for any oil sheens.

The crew was reportedly heading to California from Tacoma. It's not known yet what caused the boat to sink.

Home » News » Vessel Sinks with Three Aboard Off Washington Coast

Vessel Sinks with Three Aboard Off Washington Coast

On Saturday, March 20, 2021, three men were rescued by a Coast Guard crew after their vessel sank five miles off the coast of La Push, Washington. The three men were found floating around debris without lifejackets late Saturday afternoon when Coast Guard officials rescued them. According to the Coast Guard, the large vessel was en route from Tacoma to California before taking on water and sinking.

The Coast Guard Puget Sound Command Center received a distress signal about a reported vessel taking on water and sinking. Minutes later a rescue crew was dispatched to begin a search for the vessel. Once the rescue crew arrived to rescue the men, two were pulled onto the boat while the third man struggled to stay afloat. One of the rescuers jumped in the water to assist him and pulled him to safety. All three men showed signs of hypothermia. According to officials, the vessel sank with several hundred gallons of diesel fuel onboard.

This incident demonstrates the dangers faced by boaters off the coast of Washington State. Here at BoatLaw, LLP, we have represented shipboard personnel throughout the pacific northwest. The firm’s admiralty lawyers have a unique understanding of the dangers these mariners face.

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Skipper airlifted after yacht sinks off the Washington coast

• Katy Stickland

The 67-year-old sailor was sailing off Leadbetter Point State Park, Washington when his yacht hit an unknown object and began taking on water

One of two sheens believed to be from the yacht. Credit: Lt. Cmdr. James Gibson/U.S. Coast Guard

A man has been rescued off the Washington coast after his yacht hit an unknown object and began sinking, forcing him to abandon ship.

The 67-year-old solo skipper suffered head injuries as a result of the collision.

He had contacted watchstanders at the  U.S. Coast Guard Sector Columbia River on VHF Channel 16 when he realised his 45-foot pleasure yacht, Sea Crest, was taking on water.

At the time, the skipper was around nine miles off Leadbetter Point State Park, Washington.

He said he was conducting a vessel check for a new navigation system and was in auto-pilot at the time of the collision.

The incident happened just after 10pm on Friday (28 July).

In a statement, the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific NorthWest said: “He reported that during the collision he hit his head and may have lost consciousness, but was not sure for how long, and water was coming into the deck scuppers.”

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The skipper abandoned ship into his 17-foot yacht tender with a life jacket, survival suit and flares, keeping in contact with the U.S, Coast Guard.

Shortly after he informed the watch standers that he had lost sight of the lights of the Sea Crest and “heard sounds that indicated the vessel might have sunk”.

The man was rescued at just after 11pm when the crew of an MH-60 Jaywhawk helicopter  from Coast Guard Air Station Astoria arrived off the Washington coast and airlifted the sailor to safety.

“The aircrew was on scene with the yacht tender at 11:06 p.m. and while preparing for the hoist, they sighted small items in the water. After they finished the hoist at 11:35 p.m., they marked the yacht tender with a strobe light as the onboard lights had been extinguished,” continued the statement.

“They landed at the air station at 11:56 p.m., and after the mariner was checked by EMS, he refused any further medical treatment.”

Some of the debris from the sunken yacht. Credit: Lt. Cmdr. James Gibson/U.S. Coast Guard

A 47-foot motor lifeboat crew, from Coast Guard Station Grays Harbor in Westport, Washington, also responded to the incident.

They arrived on scene at just after midnight, located the yacht tender and towed it back to their station.

On Saturday morning (29 July), a second Jayhawk helicopter crew from the air station in Astoria conducted an overflight where they located the sunken vessel and spotted two sheens on the water.

The crew marked the location with a self-locating datum marker buoy and sector watchstanders issued an safety marine information broadcast to alert mariners of the potential navigation hazard.

Crab boat sinks off SW Washington coast; 2 rescued, 1 missing

• Updated: Feb. 07, 2023, 3:03 p.m. |
• Published: Feb. 07, 2023, 8:23 a.m.

Southwest Washington news from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

• The Associated Press

A crew member remains missing and two others were rescued from crab boat that sank near Willapa Bay in southwest Washington on Sunday evening, according to the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard on Twitter posted a video and said a helicopter crew from Astoria hoisted two people from a life raft into the helicopter during rough weather and large waves.

Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier, a public affairs specialist for the Coast Guard 13th District In Seattle told The Seattle Times that Coast Guard teams were notified of the 46-foot Ethel May sinking by an emergency position-indicating radio beacon that began broadcasting a signal as the boat went down around 7:30 p.m.

The Coast Guard watch in Warrenton was also notified of a 911 call made from the wife of one of the crabbers.

The Coast Guard helicopter arrived on scene around 8:10 p.m. The two hoisted crew members had mild hypothermia and were taken to Willapa Harbor Hospital.

A search for the third crew member was suspended Monday evening, the Coast Guard said on Twitter.

During a 15-hour search, crews from the air, sea, and shore covered 290 square miles throughout Willapa Bay, the coastline, and offshore, according to the Coast Guard.

Search crews found debris from the boat within Willapa Bay, and nearby waters in the Pacific. That indicates the vessel broke apart, according to a Coast Guard statement.

As of Monday evening, the names of the two survivors or the missing person had not been released.

Dungeness crab is the state’s most valuable commercial seafood harvest. The seasons have generated on average $47.92 million to crabbers in the past decade.

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2 dead, 1 rescued after Canadian fishing boat sinks off Washington coast

U.s. coast guard says survivor is a canadian found in good health in lifeboat.

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Two people died after a Canadian fishing vessel sank off the coast of Washington state on Tuesday, CBC News has learned.

The U.S. Coast Guard said a third person on board was rescued and is in good health.

A BC Coroners Service spokesperson confirmed that two people died and that both people were Canadian.

In a statement, the coast guard said it received a radio distress call around 2 a.m. PT on Tuesday from the 20-metre commercial fishing vessel, Arctic Fox II, which was about 135 kilometres off Cape Flattery in Washington state at the time.

Cape Flattery is the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States. It is just south of Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island, across the Salish Sea.

The caller said the vessel was taking on water, and three people aboard planned to abandon ship. The caller reported they were wearing survival suits — floating suits that help delay the onset of hypothermia.

The coast guard deployed a helicopter from Oregon and a plane from California to search for the crew. Once the aircrew arrived, the coast guard said, they immediately spotted a lifeboat with one survivor aboard. He was hoisted into the helicopter.

Petty Officer Michael Clark, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard, said the survivor, a Canadian, was taken to a coast guard base at Neah Bay, close to Cape Flattery, where he was assessed and found to be in good health.

Clark said U.S. Customs and Border Protection is facilitating his return to Canada.

Lt.-Cmdr. Tony Wright with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria said the agency sent a helicopter and a plane to assist, but both had returned to the Comox airbase by Tuesday afternoon.

Clark said the boat has now sunk in international waters. Canadian authorities will likely lead the investigation, and the U.S. will assist. 

• Video 'Relationship is paramount': U.S., Canadian coast guards rely on each other to save lives

Transport Canada lists a fishing boat named Arctic Fox II in its vessel registration system.

According to the federal registry, Arctic Fox II is a wood-built boat constructed in Scotland in 1947. Victoria is its port of registry.

Teague Fishing Corp. of Shawnigan Lake, B.C. owns the boat. In a email statement on Wednesday, the company wrote that it is co-operating with the ongoing investigation.

"We are grieving the loss of crew aboard the vessel and extend our heartfelt condolences to the families," it said.

The coroner said both bodies have been flown to Victoria and next of kin have been notified.

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$10 Million Yacht Sinks During Launch in Washington State

A $10 million, 90-foot yacht was being launched in Washington state when it suddenly capsized.

The yacht, named Baden, had already been lowered into the water in Anacortes, about 80 miles north of Seattle, when it slowly tilted and then sank, according to media reports .

The cause of last month's accident is under investigation, but New World Yacht Builders, which built the yacht under the Northern Marine brand, said the problem appeared to be in the launch apparatus, not with the boat.

"The physical evidence on, and adjacent to, the launch ramp suggests that the dolly carrying the weight of the port stern of the yacht may have suddenly dropped off the edge of the boat ramp during the launch, causing the vessel to experience a sudden list to port, from which it could not recover in its light condition for launch," Northern Marine said in a press release .

A YouTube video from YachtVid shows someone at the launch ceremony breaking the ritual champagne bottle on the hull before the boat slid into the water.

As it entered the water, the vessel started to lean to the port side, and then quickly capsized. Six people were on board and all escaped serious injury, according to reports.

Northern Marine said it has launched more than 35 vessels at the same ramp with no previous problems. Baden is a so-called "explorer yacht," designed more for remote expeditions than leisure.

The company added that it has "complete confidence" in its designs. According to a local media report , New World Yacht has since laid off its staff of 52 and production has been suspended.

—CNBC and NBC News staff

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US Coast Guard assisting disabled yacht off Washington coast

Seven people are onboard the disabled vessel, the coast guard said.

US Coast Guard assisting disabled yacht with 7 onboard

The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting a yacht that is disabled in Washington State with seven people on board, with water entering the stern. (Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)

The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting a yacht that is disabled off the coast of Washington State with seven people on board.

In a tweet on Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard said that the 143-foot yacht is disabled 45 miles northwest of Grays Harbor, Washington.

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The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting a yacht that is disabled in Washington State with seven people on board, with water entering the stern. (U.S. Coast Guard)

The yacht's transom door is unable to close and water is entering the stern, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. No one on the yacht is injured.

" #USCG crews responding to a disabled 143-foot yacht 45-miles northwest of Grays Harbor, Wash., with 7 people aboard. No medical concerns. Vessel cannot close transom door and water has entered the stern. Flooding is under control. Rescue crews remain on scene," the tweet states.

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A 210-foot U.S. Coast Guard vessel will tow the yacht for 10 hours until reaching the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where a commercial towing agency will take over.

Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter @asabes10.

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2 crabbers rescued, 1 missing after fishing boat breaks apart off Washington coast

The coast guard in seattle received an emergency distress signal from the 46-foot crabbing vessel ethel may around 7:30 p.m. sunday while it was located just off the southern washington coast near the willapa bay entrance..

Coast Guard rescues 2 from sunken crab boat off Washington coast.

Two men were plucked from a life raft off the Washington Coast after their crab boat sank Sunday evening, but a third crew member remains missing. (Video: U.S. Coast Guard)

ASTORIA, Ore. – Two crabbers were rescued Sunday after their fishing boat sank off the Washington coast, but a third remains missing, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard in Seattle received an emergency distress signal from the 46-foot crabbing vessel Ethel May about 7:30 p.m. local time while it was located just off the southern Washington coast near the Willapa Bay entrance. Around the same time, the Coast Guard station in Warrenton, Oregon , was notified that the wife of one of the crew members had just called 911 to report an emergency on board the Ethel May.

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A rescue helicopter headed to the scene and spotted two men inside a life raft at 8:10 p.m. The two were safely hoisted on board, where they reported a third crew member was still missing.

A Coast Guard rescue crew from Air Station Astoria safely hoists two men into an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter near Willapa Bay, Washington, Feb. 5, 2023. 

(U.S. Coast Guard / FOX Weather)

The chopper brought the two men to a waiting ambulance on the shore, where they were taken to a local hospital for further evaluation and treatment for hypothermia.

The helicopter and other Coast Guard boats returned to the scene and conducted a 15-hour search well into Monday afternoon, covering 290 square miles, but came up empty. They did spot the debris floating inside Willapa Bay and along the Pacific shoreline, indicating the vessel had broken apart, Coast Guard officials said.

WATCH: FISHERMEN CLING TO COOLER AFTER BOAT CAPSIZES OFF AUSTRALIAN COAST

"Suspending search efforts is a tough decision that we never take lightly," Lt. Cmdr. Colin Fogarty, the search and rescue mission coordinator for Coast Guard Sector Columbia River, said in a news release. "The Coast Guard continues to speak with the family affected by this incident."

The cause of the boat's demise is unknown. Nearby weather stations reported overcast skies and winds gusting to 25 mph during the mayday call, with seas predicted at 8-10 feet that evening. 

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MYNORTHWEST HISTORY

Sunken ship lost 150 years ago, found off WA coast

Dec 2, 2022, 12:55 PM | Updated: 3:27 pm

Image of the steamship PACIFIC, lost in 1875 off the Washington coast; the ship was recently discovered by a pair of Seattle area maritime historians. (Public domain)

(Public domain)

BY FELIKS BANEL

Reporting live from Seattle's past

The wreck of a long-lost “sidewheeler steamship” that sank off the coast of Washington nearly 150 years ago has been found by a pair of local maritime historians .

The ship we’re talking about is called the “SS PACIFIC” – a 225-foot long sidewheel steamer. It carried passengers and cargo way back in the time of the Washington Territory

The ship was on its way from Puget Sound and Victoria to San Francisco when it collided with a big sailing ship in the dark off of Cape Flattery on November 4, 1875 – that’s a long time ago!

The sinking of the SS Pacific was a major event

When the PACIFIC went down, it was a terrible tragedy.

The loss of hundreds of lives makes it one of the most – if not the  most – deadly maritime disasters in Northwest history.

The guy who led the search for the SS PACIFIC is Jeff Hummel. He’s in his late 50s and he’s been doing underwater recovery of historic boats and planes with his friend Matt McCauley since they were in high school on Mercer Island 40 years ago.

It will be a ‘treasure trove of artifacts’

“The wreck is in remarkable condition,” Hummel told KIRO Newsradio. “And we believe that it is going to be just an absolute treasure trove of artifacts from this era. You know, an absolute time capsule. We believe that we will find items made of leather, which we believe will find items made of cloth will find bottles of wine. I mean, the state of preservation is really incredible.”

Hummel has been searching for the SS PACIFIC for about 30 years – and he’s certainly not the first to look for it. The fact the wreck happened in 1875 means that reliable data to locate the vessel was hard to come by, and that meant an enormous search area of hundreds and hundreds of square miles.

But, Hummel found an unexpected way to locate the wreck and to confirm that it was the SS PACIFIC through a process that should be called “forensic geology.”

New methods were used to find the ship

“One of the ways that we narrowed down the search was to work with commercial fishermen who occasionally bring things up in their nets,” Hummel said. “And eventually, we found some fishermen that usually get coal and we actually got a sample, the coal, we had it chemically analyzed and were able to determine that the coal came from a coal mine down in Coos Bay, Oregon that was owned by the owners of the ship and would have been part of the fuel that the ship had from San Francisco.”

More Feliks: MOHAI celebrates 10 years with a look at Seattle’s complicated recent history

Now, they just secured legal salvage rights to the wreck here in federal court. They’re being a little cagey about the specific whereabouts of the wreck, but they do say it’s at a depth of somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 feet below the surface. They want to protect the wreck and those artifacts, and what could be as much as 200 pounds of gold on board.

Close up of the Pacific’s starboard paddle wheel, 1875. Photo courtesy MOHAI, Seattle Historical Society Collection, SHS11765.

Hummel and the crew he works with have sent down remote-operated vehicles and taken some images of the wreck and the debris field – which they say clearly shows the two sidewheels on the bottom – as if they broke off as the ship sank.

McCauley is leading the historic research efforts and what he hopes will be the preservation and display of the artifacts in a museum.

Many people died in the sinking

McCauley says that in 1875, many miners were leaving Victoria and headed back to San Francisco after being in the Cassiar district of far northern British Columbia, where a gold rush was underway. This means that the SS PACIFIC was packed with hundreds of passengers.

“They were jamming people into the end of the vessel,” McCauley told KIRO Newsradio. “The carpenters were nailing up bunks in the Salon Deck to accommodate all these people. So that’s not like tickets and they knew exactly they were just cramming them on.”

So no one really knows exactly how many passengers were aboard. It could have been as many as 400. A book from the 1890s about Northwest shipwrecks lists many of the white passengers by full name, along with “41 Chinamen” who are not named – reflecting the matter-of-fact, almost casual racism which was present in that era.

Now, about the actual disaster.

Details of the incident

It was around 10 p.m. on the evening of November 4, 1875, as the SS PACIFIC was making its way south near Cape Flattery when it collided with a big sailing ship called ORPHEUS, which was empty and headed north and then east to pick up coal in Nanaimo.

The ORPHEUS was just a few years old and made of 12-inch thick oak, and the SS PACIFIC was 25 years old and was clad in 2-inch thick planks. It was dark, and the ORPHEUS was under sail and was also damaged in the collision. The crew of the ORPHEUS assumed the PACIFIC was okay and had just kept going.

It wasn’t okay and didn’t take very long for the PACIFIC to sink.

Only a handful of details of what happened came to light afterward because there were only two survivors – one who floated around on debris for 40 hours, and another for 80 hours.

Among those lost was the captain, who was the brother-in-law of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Another was the husband of Frances Fuller Victor, one of the most important West Coast historians of the 19 th century. There are all kinds of stories like that about the SS PACIFIC, so there’s all kinds of research to do.

Site analysis comes in 2023

As far as the wreck, Hummel says the next thing is to do more site analysis next year.

“We’re planning on doing artifact recovery from the debris field next fall, so sometime like September, October of next year, we’ll do that,” Hummel said. “And the debris field is a few thousand square meters. And we’re going to develop some equipment to recover and preserve the artifacts from there.”

So this is in the early stages of the recovery portion of the project. Jeff and Matt are used to things taking a long time. I mentioned they’ve been doing this sort of thing since high school. One of the first things they ever recovered was a Navy plane off of Sand Point – a Curtis Helldiver – which is under restoration in Colorado and likely to become one of only two remaining examples of that plane that are flyable.

“So Matt and I are responsible for 50% of the flying relics of that particular airplane,” Hummel said, obviously proud that what was once discarded by the Navy will be airworthy 40 years after he and McCauley retrieved it. “And it would have been scrapped and melted down into pop cans if we hadn’t done what we did.”

“And we pulled it out [of the lake] at age 19,” Matt McCauley added. “And when we see it fly, we’ll literally have our grandchildren with us.”

“Thanks for making me feel young,” Hummel said, chuckling.

You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News, read more from him  here , and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast  here . If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks  here .

Feliks Banel

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Man rescued from sinking yacht in Oregon allegedly left dead fish at 'Goonies' house days earlier

Police in Astoria, Oregon, said the yacht had been stolen.

A man saved from a sinking yacht was later identified as a wanted suspect who allegedly left a fish on the porch of the house from “The Goonies” in Oregon, police said.

The yacht had been stolen and the man, identified as Jericho Labonte, 35, was arrested after the rescue, police in Astoria, Oregon, said.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s Pacific Northwest district on Friday released a video of a yacht in danger in high waves at the mouth of the Colombia River.

“The surf made rescue by boat dangerous, so the aircrew decided to lower the rescue swimmer and have the owner enter the water for rescue,” the Coast Guard said. “As he entered the water the vessel capsized but the rescue swimmer was able to safely recover the individual.”

After the Coast Guard posted the video, police in Astoria, Oregon, said they began receiving calls about both the rescued man and the vessel.

“On February 3, 2023, we received a call from Port Security Chief Matt Hansen informing us that the vessel involved in the Coast Guard rescue earlier in the day was stolen from the Port of Astoria,” the department said in a news release . “He recognized the vessel on the video, contacted the owner, and confirmed that it had been stolen.”

Calls also began coming in about the man who had been rescued, with locals identifying him as Labonte, police said. Police in Victoria, British Columbia, had been searching for Labonte since at least Jan. 19, when they issued a province-wide arrest warrant for him for five unendorsed warrants for charges of criminal harassment, mischief and three counts of failure to comply.

Police in Oregon said Labonte was released from the hospital on Friday before they realized who he was.

“He had been transported to Columbia Memorial Hospital after the rescue as a precaution and was discharged before being identified as the suspect,” Astoria police officials said.

Astoria Police said they had added their own charges against Labonte, saying in press release that he was wanted on charges including theft, endangering another person, unauthorized use of a vehicle and criminal mischief.

They said they had received a call on Feb. 1 saying that Labonte “had posted a video of himself on Facebook placing a dead fish on the front porch of the Goonies’ house.”

Labonte was arrested on Friday evening at the Seaside Warming Center, a shelter in Astoria, police said.

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• The East Coast is sinking

Nearly 40% of Americans live along coasts, where aging buildings, roads and rails face structural damage from floods. New research from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey used satellite data to show the mounting threats to coastal communities.

“You have a hazard that is becoming worse every day with sea level rise,” said lead author Leonard Ohenhen, a doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech.

The global average sea level has been rising around 3.3 millimeters per year since the early 1990s, according to satellite readings from NASA. And based on longer records from tide gauges, we know that rate is accelerating, said Kenneth Miller, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University. Local subsidence, or sinking land, makes the threat of sea level rise worse in some places than others.

Researchers say a dominant cause for subsidence is groundwater depletion. A layer cake of overlapping aquifers extends from New Jersey to Florida along the coast, providing a reliable source of water for drinking, irrigation and industrial uses. Although the region gets regular rainfall, deeper aquifers below clay or bedrock can take hundreds or thousands of years to recharge once water is pumped out. Surface aquifers can be prone to pollution and saltwater intrusion.

Once water is removed, soils can compress and collapse, causing the land surface to sink. Cities built on drained marshland or fill are especially vulnerable to compaction.

Other forces can also influence vertical land movement: Sediments can build up at river deltas and naturally compress under their own weight. And as the weight of enormous glaciers that once extended down to New Jersey lifted after the last ice age, a seesaw effect is causing bedrock across the mid-Atlantic and South to sink by about 1 millimeter per year.

Boston should be on the rising end of that seesaw, but many areas of the city were built on soft soil prone to compaction.

To stabilize early buildings in Boston, wood pilings were driven into waterlogged earth where groundwater preserved the structures. Depletion of those aquifers has exposed the wood to air in some cases, causing foundations to rot. Some homeowners have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair the pilings to keep their homes from collapsing.

A few millimeters of sinking a year can seem gradual, but the effects can be extreme: Storm surges can suddenly wash away the soil from beneath the roads, or floodwaters can fill basements and cut off emergency routes. Each inch the land slumps toward the water table can make floods significantly, catastrophically worse.

“That’s the thing about sea level (rise). It’s slow and it’s insidious and continuous,” Miller said. That is, until the next big storm hits. “We’ve been fortunate in the past 11 years since (Hurricane) Sandy that we’ve not seen an event like that. We obviously are very likely to see similar events in the next 10 years or so.”

Patches of land that sink or rise more quickly than adjacent areas can also do outsize damage, cracking foundations and destabilizing structures over time. The authors of the study found these distortion hot spots near Cape Canaveral, Florida; the suburbs and exurbs of Boston; and across Delaware and Maryland on the Delmarva Peninsula.

An assessment from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021 found that more than 40% of the nation’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition. The assessment of bridges, airports and water infrastructure is similar. The Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains the country’s aging levees and is involved in the planning and construction of new coastal protections, says that the mounting disasters in recent years have led directly to a greater number of resilience projects.

“We definitely have seen an increase in the number of incidents related to subsidence as it relates to flooding in the last decade-plus,” said Sandy Hertz, director of the Office of Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation at the Maryland Department of Transportation. The state expects to see an additional 2.5 feet of relative sea level rise by 2100, according to a study published last year.

Maryland will receive $107 million, out of a total $7.3 billion allocated to states, to improve the climate resilience of its transportation systems through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. Coastal communities will also receive $2.6 billion over five years from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to prepare and respond to climate hazards.

An effort among multiple federal agencies to coordinate on these regional climate risks has grown in recent years. This detailed survey of Atlantic coast land motion was part of a broader U.S. Geological Survey study on a suite of coastal hazards. It adds to a vast trove of new data for decision-making around coastal risk, including where people live and rely on critical infrastructure, and where the water is now versus where it may be in 10, 20, 50 years or beyond.

“Water does not obey geographic boundaries, and neither does land subsidence,” Hertz said. “We really need to take a shared approach to resiliency to protect not just the emergency evacuation routes but the significant infrastructure and destinations that we have across the East Coast.”

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• Tuesday, March 5, 2024
• Today's Paper

Grounded sailboat in pieces off Waikiki

• By Leila Fujimori [email protected]
• March 4, 2024
• Updated 5:17 am

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COURTESY U.S. COAST GUARD SECTOR HONOLULU

The 49-foot sailing vessel Criterion ran aground near Turtle Canyon with 25 people on board on Sunday.

Salvage of the 49-foot sailing vessel, the Criterion, that ran aground Sunday off Waikiki, did not begin Monday, according to authorities.

Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation Administrator Ed Underwood said today the boat is “currently broken up in pieces.”

“It appears that the owner’s insurance will not cover the boat salvage/wreck removal,” he said in a written statement. “DOBOR staff is currently looking at contracts for boat salvage/removal.”

The Coast Guard said that the waves caused the vessel to start breaking apart Monday morning.

However, the Coast Guard reported the owner is working with two companies to remove the diesel and salvage the vessel.

The owner also has a plan in place to clean the shoreline and to remove all vessel debris, the Coast Guard said in a social media post.

The Coast Guard said after search and rescue operations were completed Sunday, pollution responders assessed the scene, and found no signs of diesel or petroleum product in the water.

The vessel had about five gallons of diesel on board in a removable container, and an unknown number of marine batteries on board, the Coast Guard said.

Pollution responders confirmed with the owner that the diesel container had not been removed, but “there have been no signs of sheening and no reports of wildlife impacted.”

Initial reports said the Criterion was a 90-foot sailboat, which struck the reef about 500 yards offshore from Fort DeRussy with 30 adults on board.

The Coast Guard said this afternoon that it had dispatched Sunday a small boat to the 49-foot sailboat, which ran aground at about 3 p.m. in the area known as “Turtle Canyon” with 25 people on board.

Ocean Safety, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Honolulu Fire Department and the Department of Land and Natural Resources responded to the grounding.

Honolulu Emergency Services Department spokeswoman Shayne Enright said that after the crash, many on board jumped into the water as the waves crashed into the sailboat. Two Ocean Safety personal watercraft crews, with help from good Samaritans, ferried the people to a boat called the Trident.

The Coast Guard said that the state Office of Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response was notified along with the DLNR.

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To keep whales safe, Coast Guard launches boat alert system in Seattle

The U.S. Coast Guard is embarking on one of its most unique missions yet in Puget Sound: a pilot program to alert vessels of whale sightings. The program is an effort to keep the giant marine mammals safe from boat strikes and noise in the highly used inland waters of Washington state. (Feb. 21) (AP Video by Manuel Valdes)

FILE - An orca swims past a recreational boat sailing just offshore in the Salish Sea in the San Juan Islands, Wash., July 31, 2015. The U.S. Coast Guard is embarking on one of its most unique missions yet in the Puget Sound: a pilot program to alert vessels of whale sightings. The program is an effort to keep the giant marine mammals safe from boat strikes and noise in the highly used inland waters of Washington state. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

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In this photo provided by Kersti Muul, a pod of Bigg’s orcas, including one known as Chainsaw for his jagged dorsal fin, swim in Seattle’s Elliott Bay as a state ferry sails behind them in May 2022, near Seattle. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. Using sighting reports from mariners and civilians and hydrophone monitoring, the so-called “cetacean desk” launches at time when more humpback whales and orcas visit the inland waters of the Salish Sea. (Kersti Muul via AP)

In this photo provided by Matt McDonald, the Washington state ferry Wenatchee collides with a humpback whale, bottom center, on May 28, 2019, just off Seattle. The whale was presumed dead after the collision. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. Using sighting reports from mariners and civilians and hydrophone monitoring, the so-called “cetacean desk” launches at time when more humpback whales and orcas visit the inland waters of the Salish Sea. (Matt McDonald via AP)

In this May 24, 2021, photo provided by Brittany Philbin taken from Me Kwa Mooks in Seattle shows an orca swimming in Puget Sound. (Brittany Philbin/Salish Wildlife Watch and PNW OPS Photography via AP)

In this Aug. 3, 2021, photo provided by Brittany Philbin taken from Discovery Park West Point Lighthouse in Seattle shows an orca. (Brittany Philbin/Salish Wildlife Watch and PNW OPS Photography via AP)

In this April 20, 2022, photo provided by Brittany Philbin taken from Alki Beach, in Seattle shows orcas swimming in Seattle’s Elliott Bay. (Brittany Philbin/Salish Wildlife Watch and PNW OPS Photography via AP)

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., left, stands next to Lt. Cmdr. Margaret Woodbridge at a press conference in Seattle, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program, which Woodbridge is managing, in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., speaks at a press conference while U.S. Coast Guard Captain Mark McDonnell, Sector Puget Sound Commander, looks on in Seattle, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program, which Woodbridge is managing, in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Margaret Woodbridge stands next to a picture of a humpback whale during a press conference in Seattle, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program, which Woodbridge is managing, in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mark McDonnell, Sector Puget Sound Commander, speaks at a press conference in Seattle, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. The U.S. Coast Guard is launching a whale alert program in Washington’s Salish Sea to help commercial and transit ships steer clear of the marine mammals. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

SEATTLE (AP) — Photographer Matt McDonald had lived on Puget Sound for years, but had never seen a whale, so he was elated when he spotted a giant marine mammal just off Seattle’s waterfront one evening.

The excitement was short-lived. As McDonald tracked the whale in his camera’s viewfinder, a state ferry that dwarfed the animal came into the frame. The next morning he saw on the news that the humpback whale had died in the collision he witnessed.

“I still remember the moment of when they crossed paths and my heart just sinking like, ‘Oh my God, the ferry just ran over the whale,’” he recalled of the 2019 encounter. “I wish there was something I could have done.”

Now, five years later, there is.

The U.S. Coast Guard has launched a pilot program to alert ships to whale sightings in Washington state’s Salish Sea. The goal of the agency’s “ cetacean desk ” is to keep the marine mammals safe from boat strikes and reduce noise in the highly transited inland seawaters by collecting sightings from civilians and mariners.

The program, which began official operations in December, comes at a time when visits by humpback whales and sea mammal-hunting orcas increase as their populations rebound.

Fed by the Pacific Ocean, the Salish Sea is a maze of islands and canals that make up the inland waters between Washington state and British Columbia, including Puget Sound. Two groups of orcas — one that preys on salmon and the other on sea mammals — as well as baleen whales have cruised these waters since time immemorial and are now often visible from Seattle’s shoreline.

But these waters are now also home to major American and Canadian ports, and nearly 300,000 vessels crisscrossed the area in 2023, from commercial container ships to cruise ships to ferries, according to the Coast Guard. That number doesn’t include private boats.

The new whale desk reduces the risk of collisions by combining sightings by mariners and civilians on whale-watching apps and data from underwater listening devices into an integrated system that will send out alerts to commercial vessels and regional ferries through a mobile app. The alerts will not go out to private or recreational boats.

“We’re focusing on empowering the ship operators with the situational awareness ... so they’re able to slow down preemptively, perhaps give a little bit of a wider berth to an area with a recently reported whale,” said Lt. Commander Margaret Woodbridge, who is managing the whale desk.

The Salish Sea is an “incredible area that has a lot of a rich diversity of whale species here,” Woodbridge added. “And also a lot of economic activity on the waterways. And so we’re really trying to help both thrive.”

People who spot whales can download one of two apps that will feed into the Coast Guard’s Puget Sound Vessel Traffic Service. Mariners can use radio frequencies and a phone tip line when they spot whales. Participation in the program is voluntary for ships.

The whale desk is modeled to match the Canadian Coast Guard’s “ Marine Mammal Desk .” Both American and Canadian desks are built on the backbone of the Whale Report Alert System (WRAS), a program developed by Canada-based Ocean Wise that incorporates sightings from publicly available apps and other sources, such as tracking information used by whale watching boats.

Work on the four-year pilot program began years ago as state and federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grappled with how to help the endangered population of southern resident killer whales, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said Wednesday.

The southern residents, which number just 75 , use echolocation to hunt salmon. But ship noise disrupts that. By slowing down, vessels reduce the noise they make.

“We kept pushing NOAA. What else can we do? What else can we do?” said Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat who shepherded the legislation that created the whale desk. “When we realized that vessel noise might be part of the situation, people start talking. ... The Coast Guard is already like, ‘we know where everybody is,’ and we’re just asking them now to take on a different responsibility: where everybody, including orcas, are.”

“It’s really a bit of a watershed moment,” Kevin Bartoy, who has been chief sustainability officer for Washington state ferries for about a decade, said of the alert system.

The collision between the humpback whale and the ferry was shocking for Bartoy, but it underlined the need for a widely used and available alert system. He said the ferry system had already joined WRAS but it wasn’t widely used in Washington then. The day of the 2019 collision there had been only one alert of a whale in the area, he said.

Now the more integrated network has resulted in an exponential increase of sightings. Woodbridge, of the Coast Guard, said reports spiked by 585% when comparing December 2022 and December 2023 when the desk launched and now that WRAS has sightings from the apps.

“The amount of sightings now that we get on any given day is incredible,” Bartoy added. “We can know essentially where a whale is at any time.”

But work is not done. The whale desk is currently mostly based on what people can see, leaving spotting the animals at night and in inclement weather much harder.

Bartoy said studies are underway in Canada and Washington to start testing land-based thermal cameras that could potentially spot whales at night by seeking their warmth in the waters as well as a more robust underwater listening — or hydrophone — system to pick up whale songs.

John Calambokidis, senior biologist at the Cascadia Research Collective, said baleen whales, like humpbacks, are especially susceptible to ship collisions at night because they spend twice as much time near the surface then.

Another way to keep whales safe is to adjust shipping lanes where possible, said Calambokidis. Through tagging, biologists know where humpback whale routinely congregate, but shifting shipping lanes is not currently being widely discussed, he said.

Late last year, a young humpback whale visited the waters off Seattle for several days and its visit provided an excellent example of what can happen when ship operators work together, said Jeff Hogan, formerly of the Soundwatch Boater Education Program .

Hogan shadowed the humpback as it breached, and ferries and other boaters adjusted their routes in real time to steer clear of the young whale, he said.

“The fact that the Coast Guard is watching elevates everyone’s behavior. It sets a standard of responsibility,” Hogan said. “We want these animals to be here. We have to make the space for them to go about their lives.”

Watch CBS News

It's not just rising sea levels – the land major cities are built on is actually sinking, NASA images show

By Caitlin O'Kane

February 21, 2024 / 12:04 PM EST / CBS News

Rising sea levels are threatening the East Coast of the U.S., but that's not the only thing to worry about, according to NASA. Images shared by the space agency on Tuesday show the coast is actually sinking — including the land that holds major cities such as New York and Baltimore. 

A NASA-funded team of scientists at Virginia Tech's Earth Observation and Innovation Lab found the geographical problem is "happening rapidly enough to threaten infrastructure, farmland, and wetlands that tens of millions of people along the coast rely upon," NASA said.

Scientists looked at satellite data and GPS sensors to monitor the motion of the coast and found that infrastructure in major cities like New York, Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia, is built on land that sank between the years of 2007 and 2020. The land subsided, or sank, by an average of 1 to 2 millimeters a year, but some counties in Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia saw their land sink twice or three times that fast.

The land in marshes sinks by more than 3 millimeters a year, the scientists found. Forests have also been displaced due to the intrusion of saltwater and the subsiding land.

And wildlife is not the only thing being affected. Along the coast, at least 897,000 structures — including highways and airports — sit on land that is subsiding. 

The findings, which followed another study from the Virginia Tech lab, were published in  PNAS Nexus .

The maps shared by NASA were created using data from satellites from the U.S., Japan and Europe. They show the Mid-Atlantic region is sinking more — caused by the Laurentide ice sheet, which started retreating 12,000 years ago, causing the region to sink downward. The sinking continues today and it inversely causes parts of the U.S. and Canada to rise. 

One of the fastest-sinking cities is Charleston, where downtown is just 10 feet above sea level. The city sees subsidence of about 4 millimeters per year. About 800,000 people live in the city, and a portion of the sinking is caused by human activities like groundwater pumping, according to NASA. 

To prevent tidal flooding, the city is considering an 8-mile seawall to protect from storm surges. 

Leonard Ohenhen, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech, called the issue of subsidence "pernicious" and "overlooked" compared to rising sea levels. But it's still a major problem and people living along the coast could see more damage to their homes, saltwater infiltrating farms and fresh water supplies, and other challenges. 

Subsidence, however, is a problem that can be slowed locally, said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a co-author on both studies and director of the Virginia Tech lab. Groundwater extraction as well as dams and other other infrastructure can also cause subsidence. 

The lab will next use these research techniques on the Gulf Coast, with a goal of mapping all of the world's coastlines, Shirzaei said. 

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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24 fishermen rescued from half-submerged ship in rough seas off Japanese island, but 1 found dead

TOKYO — A Japanese coast guard helicopter rescued 24 fishermen as they desperately clung to the deck of a tilting , half-submerged ship being pounded by high waves Monday morning off an island chain southwest of Tokyo. One crewmember thrown from the rocking ship into the rough seas before the arrival of the rescuers was found dead.

The Fukuei Maru No. 8 stalled due to an engine failure Sunday evening in the Pacific Ocean, about five hours after it departed the Yaizu Port in central Japan en route to South America for tuna fishing, according to the coast guard statement.

It apparently drifted in the rough seas and was blown by the strong wind, and the captain sent a distress signal about five hours later, saying his ship hit the rocks, the coast guard said. It said that within two hours of the rescuers’ arrival at the scene, the ship reported to them that one crew was missing.

The coast guard sent three patrol ships and three helicopters with special rescue teams to the site where the 56-meter (183-foot), 379-ton ship went aground just north of Kozushima Island, part of the Izu group and about 170 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Tokyo.

Public broadcaster NHK showed the crewmembers standing against the bridge of the half-submerged ship as the waves pounded into it, each person waiting for their turn as fellow crewmembers were airlifted one by one by the helicopter hovering overhead.

The ship carried 20 Indonesian crewmembers and five Japanese, including its captain, the coast guard said.

The man thrown into the water was found washed ashore and was pronounced dead at a clinic nearby. He was the ship’s first engineer and was a 67-year-old Japanese man.

The cause of the ship’s engine failure and loss of power was not immediately known.

East Coast cities are sinking at a shocking rate, NASA images show

Satellite images reveal the rate that cities along the U.S. East Coast, including New York, Baltimore and Charleston, are sinking into the ground.

NASA satellite images show the shocking speed at which the land is sinking beneath major U.S. cities , including Baltimore, New York and Charleston. 

The images, revealed by NASA Earth Observatory on Feb. 20, show land movement across the East Coast, with areas in dark blue sinking at the fastest rate. The subsidence threatens infrastructure, farmland and wetlands — especially as sea levels rise .

Between 2007 and 2020, the ground underneath New York, Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia, sank by an average of 0.04 and 0.08 inch (1 to 2 millimeters) a year, the satellite data showed. In several counties in Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia sank at double or triple that rate, according to a study published Jan. 2 in the journal PNAS Nexus .

"Subsidence is a pernicious, highly localized, and often overlooked problem in comparison to global sea level rise , but it's a major factor that explains why water levels are rising in many parts of the eastern U.S.," Leonard Ohenhen , a geophysicist at Virginia Tech and one of the authors of the study, told NASA Earth Observatory.

Related: New York City may be sinking under its own weight because the buildings are too heavy, scientists warn

Subsidence has many consequences for people living along the coast, including a greater risk of flooding and damage to homes and infrastructure caused by unstable ground. At least 867,000 properties and critical infrastructure — including highways, railways, airports, dams and levees — were all subsiding, according to the study.

Sinking land can also lead to salt water intruding into farmland, crops and fresh water supplies, as well as impacting wildlife habitats like marshlands, according to NASA Earth Observatory.

One of the fastest-sinking cities is Charleston, South Carolina, where the downtown area is just 10 feet (3 meters) above sea level. The city is sinking by around 0.16 inch (4 mm) per year.

According to NASA Earth Observatory, the subsidence under Charleston is largely caused by human activity such as groundwater pumping. When humans drain underground aquifers or extract natural gas from the ground, the empty spaces left behind can collapse, causing the land above to sink. However, in places like New York, a combination of factors are contributing to subsidence, including the soft land it is built on and the weight of the buildings.

The researchers used satellite images and ground-based GPS sensors to study the coast from New England to Florida. They then created a map that revealed the variability in the rising and falling of various areas along the coast. That data was measured against data collected by the ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System to detect the rate of sinking.

— A major US city is sinking, and this time it's due to 'underground climate change'

— Climate change causes a mountain peak frozen for thousands of years to collapse

— Satellite images reveal just how much cities on the US East Coast are sinking  

According to the maps, the mid-Atlantic region is sinking more than the northeastern U.S. This is largely down to a geological process called glacial isostatic adjustment , which is the ongoing movement of land once burdened by heavy ice sheets during the last ice age , which lasted from around 126,000 to 11,700 years ago.

The edge of the huge Laurentide ice sheet ran through what are now Pennsylvania and New Jersey, pushing the land down with the weight of the ice. Meanwhile, the land beyond the ice's perimeter was forced upwards. When the ice began to melt around 12,000 years ago, the land that once bulged along the coast began to sink and is continuing to do so.

Study co-author Manoochehr Shirzaei , director of the Virginia Tech lab, said the researchers hope to map the Gulf Coast next. "Our long-range goal is to map all of the world's coastlines using this technique," he said in the press release. "We know that planners in several U.S. cities are already using our data to make our coastlines more resilient, and we want cities all over the world to be able to do the same."

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Lydia Smith is a health and science journalist who works for U.K. and U.S. publications. She is studying for an MSc in psychology at the University of Glasgow and has an MA in English literature from King's College London.

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