The Mystery of the Arctic Rose

June 27, 2002 -- 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.

At the outset — despite having to return to port twice because of propeller shaft problems — the fishermen were optimistic. "If we can find the fish soon, we should make some money," rookie Jeff Meincke wrote in a letter to his family Feb. 5.

But the weather was bad through February, and the Arctic Rose had no luck finding fish. "The weather has been sh---y," Meincke wrote Feb. 27. "Last night we were in 40-foot swells with 70-knot winds. Pretty nasty."

By the beginning of March, the captain and crew were getting frustrated. "Many days and no fish," Meincke wrote on March 5. "The weather is as sh---y as it can get. We're hiding behind an island to stay out of the worst of it.... going insane just sitting around."

By March 19, Rundall had given up any hope of getting a decent catch of cod, and changed their target to flathead sole. Some of the crew were ready to just go home. "Our captain refuses to go back until we are full or out of fuel," Meincke wrote that day.

Racing a Storm

After a final fueling stop at St. Paul — a tiny island in "the middle of freakin' nowhere," Meincke wrote — the Arctic Rose headed northwest for the remote Zhemchug Flats, where Rundall had heard there were good prospects for sole.

The crew started fishing and things began to look up. "Looks like it may be promising," Rundall wrote to his wife March 31. "First two tows were crap, but the last one looked better." Later that day, they finally hit a big catch: a haul of flathead sole around 10 tons.

But a storm was also heading to the Zhemchug Flats, with forecasts for 45-knot winds and 24-foot seas. The crew kept fishing while the winds grew. At 3:50 p.m. the next day, April 1, Rundall sent what would be his last e-mail to his wife: "Hi honey, I'm thinking about you right now. We're catching a few fish here, but the weather is rough again. I got to go. I love you, sexxxyy girl. XOXO - D."

The Arctic Rose was last seen at 10 p.m., when crew aboard the Alaskan Rose spotted her lights on the horizon from five miles away. During the night, the Arctic Rose moved out of her sister ship's radar range, and then, at 3:38 a.m., an orbiting satellite picked up the ping from the locator, which is designed to transmit when it is immersed in water.

Boat Considered Small for Alaska Seas

Although dozens of Alaskan fishing boats go down every year, it is rare for an entire crew to disappear without warning. The loss of 15 lives aboard the Arctic Rose was the deadliest U.S. fishing accident in 50 years.

The boat, originally named Sea Power, was built in 1988 for shrimping in the Gulf of Mexico. She was refitted in the 1990s as an all-weather trawler for service in the harsh conditions off Alaska, and given a northern name.

Mike Hastings, a former skipper, was afraid that at 92 feet the Arctic Rose was too small for the brutality of winter and spring on the Bering Sea. "I slept with one eye open pretty much," he said.

Tom Evans, an attorney representing the families of two of the victims, maintains that the vessel was unseaworthy, with propeller shaft problems and a built-on fish-processing deck that made it top-heavy. In retrofitting the vessel, the owner — who had captained the boat until recently and who lost a brother in the accident — had increased ballast and taken other steps to make the boat more seaworthy. While small commercial fishboats are largely unregulated, the Arctic Rose had passed all her federal safety inspections.

Standing Upright on the Ocean Floor

Four months after the sinking, the Coast Guard sent a specially equipped ship with a remote-operated underwater camera to the site. The camera captured eerie images of the Arctic Rose sitting upright and apparently intact on the ocean floor, 400 feet down.

A watertight door was slightly open, raising the possibility that she was swamped by a wave. There was fishing line tangled around the propeller, which might have hampered the boat's maneuverability. The rudder was hard over to port, suggesting that the boat was in a sharp turn when it went down, possibly reacting to a sudden change in wind or wave direction.

But there was no visible damage to the hull, or any obvious sign of what sent the boat to the bottom of the ocean. Coast Guard investigators are still looking into the case and will release a final report later this year. But it's unlikely anyone will ever know for sure what happened to the Arctic Rose and the 15 fishermen who sailed on her.

Kari Rundall has a new dream now. Her husband is working on the dock with an old fisherman. She asks him if he was scared when his boat went down. He replies, "I'm OK, Kari. It was just cold," then goes back to work on his nets.

This story originally aired on Feb. 7, 2002.