First time since 2013: Icebreaker arrives in Dutch Harbor, Alaska
For the first time in eight years, the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star has stopped by Dutch Harbor in Alaska. The vessel is patrolling the Bering and Chukchi seas.
By Michael McGrady, Maritime Direct Americas Correspondent
The U.S. Coast Guard announced earlier this month that the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB-10) has arrived in Dutch Harbor, in Unalaska, Ak., for the first time since 2013, according to Workboat. The Polar class icebreaker is making a stop at the harbour for a logistics replenishment, thirty days into a multi-months-long deployment to Arctic waters.
The vessel is patrolling the Bering and Chukchi seas in an effort to “project power and support national security objectives throughout Alaskan waters and into the Arctic, including along the Maritime Boundary Line between the United States and Russia.”
According to a Coast Guard spokesperson, the vessel is also on a national security mission as a mitigation effort to patrol, detect, and deter illegal fishing by foreign actors in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone along the Alaskan coast. The National Ocean Service states that the economic zone extends “no more than 200 nautical miles from the territorial sea baseline” and is adjacent to the “12 nautical mile territorial sea” limits surrounding the U.S., states lie Alaska, and commonwealths like Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and other insular territorial possessions.
Polar Star’s crew also engaged in security exercises and scientific research, including the deployment of four research ice buoys designed by the University of Washington and the U.S. military’s Office of Naval Research. The vessel’s crew also launched new sensors to examine Arctic waters, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts. The Navy Times, via the wire service Associated Press, that the Polar Star was reassigned to the Arctic after COVID-19 limited the travel and population of the research stations on Antarctica.
Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star is based in Seattle, Wa., and is under the agency’s Pacific Area command. Polar Star is the heavy icebreaker vessel operating in the entire U.S.
