The five men killed in a boating accident in Cook Inlet this week are from outside Alaska and the seafood company they worked for is still trying to determine how they died, the company president says.
The men were aboard a 20-foot skiff that was first reported missing Tuesday afternoon. Co-workers soon found a body washed ashore. By 11 a.m. Wednesday, all five members of the group had been found dead in the area of a commercial clamming camp on the west side of the Inlet.
Three of the men were from Oregon and two were from California, said Frank Dulcich, president and chief executive for Oregon-based Pacific Seafood Group.
Pacific Seafood is the parent company of Pacific Alaska Shellfish, which runs a Nikiski processing plant that prepares the razor clams for market. The five dead men worked as contractors for the seafood company.
Dulcich declined to name the men "out of respect for the families," he said. State troopers also had not publicly identified the men as of Thursday afternoon, pending notification of their next of kin.
Dulcich, however, said a company representative has met with each man's family to offer condolences and assistance.
The company declined to name the men's hometowns.
It was also unclear if all five men were United States citizens.
"To my knowledge, three are and two have work permits," Dulcich said.
"As of this time we believe that they had work visa permits. That's our understanding right now. That's still part of the whole discovery of what and who," he said.
The clam diggers were paid by the pound for razor clams they dug by hand from a 6-mile stretch of shore southwest of Kalgin Island. It's backbreaking work with beautiful scenery, one employee wrote in 2010. Last year, diggers were paid about 60 cents a pound for harvested clams, a state biologist said.
Workers at the Polly Creek camp regularly use rafts to access the shore and transport clams.
Asked what safety policies the firm has in place to avoid boating accidents, Dulcich said the workers are supplied with life vests, flares and whistles.
Three of the dead men were discovered wearing life vests, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Two were not.
The seafood company provides water-safety training, Dulcich said. He didn't know if the men on the skiff had received that training. That would have been the responsibility of the contractor who hired them, he said.
"We've never had a fatality around the water over 70 years in business and that's why all this is very disconcerting," Dulcich said.
The workers had varying levels of experience; one had worked for the clamming operation for nine years, while another may have been working his first or second year at the camp, Dulcich said.
The company president talked with reporters at a news conference in Oregon on Thursday and in a brief phone interview with the Daily News.
Of the 25 people who hold commercial razor clam fishing permits with the state, 10 are from Oregon, eight are from California and six are from Washington state, according to the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. The sole Alaskan lists a Soldotna address.
Dulcich declined to comment on how exactly the accident may have occurred.
"Right now, we don't know what caused this tragedy and until we have the facts, it would be irresponsible to speculate," he told reporters in Oregon, according to a copy of the remarks.
The Coast Guard and troopers are investigating the cause of the accident, said Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley.
Meantime, the aluminum skiff reappeared Wednesday on the mud flats as tides receded, he said.
Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com