Tag Archives: Deckhand Dan Jacobson

Into the ice: A crab boat’s quest for snow crab in a Bering Sea upended by climate change

Aboard the F/V Pinnacle in the Bering Sea. Through the wheelhouse window, Capt. Mark Casto spotted a white line on the horizon. The edge of an ice floe was illuminated by bow lights piercing the morning darkness of the Bering Sea. He throttled back the engines. Soon, the Seattle-based crab boat began to nose through closely packed pancake-like pieces and bigger craggy chunks, some the size of boulders, which bobbed about in the currents and clanged against the hull. Casto grabbed a microphone to relay a change in plans to the deck crew. Pull the pots up and stack them aboard. They would search for crab somewhere else. “Where the hell did that ice floe come from? … We’re retreating. It’s a hard word to say,” Casto declared. photos, video, charts and grafs, >click to read< 17:50