The Mystery of the Arctic Rose

June 27 -- On the day he set out on his last journey, fishboat captain Dave Rundall got a worried last call from his wife, who had had a terrifying dream.

"I had this horrible nightmare that I was upstairs in the kitchen and the phone rang," Kari Rundall remembers telling her husband by phone from their home in Hawaii. "They said: the boat sank and Davey's dead."

Dave, who was in Seattle preparing his boat, the Arctic Rose, for a four-month trip to the rich fishing grounds off the coast of Alaska, said, "Whoa" and hesitated. Then Kari heard someone yelling for him and he rang off, saying, "Honey, I have to go. I have to move the boat."

Three months later, Kari got the call she had dreaded. The Arctic Rose had disappeared somewhere in the Bering Sea, along with her husband and his 14-man crew.

"I hung up the phone and I was in shock," Kari told Primetime's Jay Schadler in an interview airing Thursday. "I turned, and then it hit me. I was standing in that same spot as in my dream and then it was just — it had me spinning.... I wanted it just to be that dream. I didn't want it to be real."

The Arctic Rose went down around 3:30 a.m. on April 2, 2001. There was no distress signal or radio call — just a ping from an emergency locator telling the Coast Guard where to look.

When her sister ship, the Alaskan Rose, reached the site in the morning, all that remained was an oil slick and the body of one man — Dave Rundall — floating in a red survival suit. The grieving families had no clue as to what had sent the boat to the bottom of the Bering Sea, and, apart from Kari, no trace of their loved ones except the letters and e-mail they had sent home during the voyage.

Bad Weather and No Fish

When they went to sea last January, Dave Rundall and his crew were hoping for one thing: a big catch that would put dollars in their pockets when they got back to shore. Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the world, and fishermen tolerate the long trips and miserable living conditions in the hope of a considerable payoff when they get home.