The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a fisherman on a Bristol Bay fishing boat who went overboard in Ugashik Bay Wednesday night.
The Coast Guard was first notified that a crew member of the Lady Colleen had gone in the water just after midnight on Thursday morning, said Petty Officer First Class Bill Colclough.
The person — Colclough said he didn't know if it was a man or a woman — fell in wearing dark-green rain gear and no life jacket, he said.
"The person reportedly could not swim, and the crew wasn't able to get to the person before they were observed going under the water," he said.
The missing crew member's name has not been released. The Coast Guard doesn't regularly release the names of people missing in search operations the agency is involved in, and Alaska State Troopers did not respond Sunday to a request for information on the incident.
Ugashik Bay is on the Alaska Peninsula, where the Ugashik River meets the Bering Sea.
The community of Pilot Point, on the east shore of the bay, is the main community in the area. It is known for its rich salmon fishing.
Two Coast Guard air crews searched all day Thursday, suspending the search Friday morning, Colclough said.
"After 14 hours, we made the difficult decision to suspend the search," he said.
Mariners in the area and the village public safety officer in Pilot Point also searched, he said. The person's body has not yet been found.
Chuck Thompson, a lifelong resident of the area, said conditions were "nasty, but that's not unusual," the night the person went overboard.
High tides, shoals, sandbars, frequent winds and high surf make the area "notoriously treacherous," Thompson said.
Others have died commercial fishing in the area: In 2014, two fishermen died when their skiff overturned on the Ugashik River. And in 2007, a longtime fisherman died after he went missing from a boat in the area.
Roland Biggs, an Ugashik man known as an experienced mariner, went missing on the way back from a fueling run to another village in October 2015. His body was never found, Thompson said.