Nature Was Too Powerful For Crabbers Killed At Sea -- Ship Called `Tiptop'; Crew Was Experienced

Craig Forde peered through the window of his fishing ship, hoping his brother, Bruce, somehow had fooled fate again and won.

The brothers worked for the same Seattle-based crabbing fleet, their vessels departing an Alaska harbor Sunday afternoon 90 minutes apart, sailing into a stormy Bering Sea. About 2 o'clock the next morning, a crewman aboard Craig's vessel heard on the radio that the Coast Guard reported a ship was in distress.

Crewmen, already fighting waves the height of telephone poles, didn't know the ship in trouble was one of their own until they nearly had arrived at the site.

"If there was anyone to be found, we would have found them," Forde said yesterday from his parents' home in Everett. "We had the right location, the manpower and the technology. It was hopeless. Nature was too great of a force for man to survive."

Four of the men disappeared with the 106-foot Northwest Mariner, and their bodies had not been recovered. Two of the crew managed to get into a life raft but did not survive.

Bruce Forde, 42, of Edmonds, died along with Jim Foster, 37, of Edmonds; Larry Johnston, 37, of Bellevue; Rob Olsen, 26, of Seattle; Bob Peterson, 35, of Seattle; and Troy Collins, 30, of Everett.

The Coast Guard in Juneau today said the identities of the two found in the life raft still were unknown, and the bodies would be returned to St. Paul, Alaska, once the weather improved. The Coast Guard Marine Safety Office in Anchorage and the National Transportation Safety Board planned to investigate the accident, which occurred on the first day of the crabbing season.

The deaths will likely renew the call to eliminate "derby-style" fishing seasons that encourage ships to sail in hazardous weather. Such risk is tempered by potential profits. For seafood companies, this is similar to the make-or-break Christmas season for retailers: An empty season can lead to bankruptcy.

Bruce Forde, a third-generation fisherman, had been active in the Seattle Fishermens Memorial Committee, and he had gone to Washington, D.C., in the past to urge Congress to eliminate derby-style fishing.

"He always advocated a more sane approach to harvesting of the resources," said Christine Forde, his wife.

"The way we're forced to fish today, with the season set and the gun going off, it forces guys into doing things they probably would really rather not do," said John Bruce, director of the Deep Sea Fishermen's Union of the Pacific and a friend to some of the crew members.

Many fishermen favor a system that assigns a quota to each vessel and allows more time to catch it. That approach will be taken for the first time this year in Alaska's halibut and sablefish seasons, Bruce said.

Working on the Northwest Mariner was a cherished job; the vessel was considered one of the fleet's finest. It had first-rate equipment, and safety measures were stressed to the crew, families of the veteran fishermen say.

"The boat was tiptop. The best equipment. The men were all well trained," said Kristen Johnston of Bellevue, wife of crewman Larry Johnston. "They all knew where the survival suits were. Even I knew where they were.

"Before every season I'd ask him, `Did you put it on, and did you wax the zipper?' The answer was always yes, but apparently the boat rolled so suddenly that getting to the survival gear was impossible."

"They took every precaution humanly possible," Craig Forde said of the crew members. In fact, he said, his brother's crew had stopped during the storm to scrape off ice. Eliminating the extra weight from the vessel can help prevent an accident.

The sea raged so violently Sunday, Craig Forde said, that ship captains may not have risked sailing in such conditions, but they felt they had no choice because the season is short-lived.

"The guidelines are set that owners don't have a choice," Forde said. "They need to change the regulation to a more realistic way of doing things."

This was going to be the final crabbing season in the turbulent Bering Sea for Foster, captain of the Northwest Mariner.

"He told us at Christmastime that this was going to be his last year," said Nancy Thurston, Foster's sister. "The risks were getting too high.

"He always told me not to worry" because he would hole up during bad weather, Thurston explained. Maybe he assumed the weather was going to be OK and "something strange" came up, perhaps bad weather settling in quickly.

"We'll never know," Thurston added.

"He loved doing it (fishing), and he respected the forces of nature . . . bending over backwards to be cautious and not take risks."

The loss of six Seattle-area men hit the fishing community in a way some compared to the recent loss of four Seattle firefighters.

Kristen Johnston called her husband's crew "a family" and said she had received messages of support from others in the fishing business.

Yesterday, as Johnston's family made plans for a Saturday memorial service, Johnston remembered her husband of six years as a strong but mellow man who loved children, especially sons Max, 4, and 1-month-old Griffin.

"This was where kids in the neighborhood played," she said. "We would have 20 kids in the front yard, and Larry was in the middle, wrestling and playing with them.

"He had taken Max since he was an infant to Mariner games, and he collected Ken Griffey Jr. cards for him."

Johnston said she last spoke to her husband last Thursday, but he called Saturday, just before the boat headed out, and left a message on the tape.

"He was talking about the season and how excited he was, and telling us that he loved us," she said.

Although dangerous, crab fishing can be lucrative. Because the supply of snow crab was good and the price was high this season, the wife of one crewman said her husband thought he might make $40,000 to $60,000 from now to the end of February.