PADUCAH, Ky. — The U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port Ohio Valley has issued a safety advisory on the Tennessee River from mile markers 80 to 22, Saturday, which includes the Kentucky and Barkley Lakes as well as the Cumberland River from mile markers 80 to 32.

Due to extremely high water and minimum output from both the Kentucky and Barkley Lock and Dams, mariners are urged to use extreme caution while transiting in the vicinity of all marinas.

Mariners are advised to transit these areas at the slowest safe speed and to be vigilant of their wake, since it can cause severe damage to property along the river banks. 

The potential hazardous conditions arising from the high water are anticipated to exist until May 6.

The Coast Guard is monitoring the river levels present on both the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers on a 24-hour basis. Currently, there are no restrictions to navigation on either lake as a result.

 The Coast Guard is working with the Army Corps of Engineers and several states and local agencies to minimize damage to property, structures and to help save lives from historic flood levels.

For more information about the safety advisory, please contact Petty Officer Brian Sullivan, Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Paducah, at (270) 442-1621.

KODIAK, Alaska – A Coast Guard Air Station HH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew discusses Coast Guard operations and missions on Woody Island April 28, 2011, to high school students who are in Kodiak for the 17th Annual Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.

The RYLA program consists of an icebreaker, team building, and experiential problem solving activities as well as group discussions and personal reflection.

U.S. Coast Guard photo by Cmdr. Peter Van Ness.

KODIAK, Alaska – An Air Station Kodiak HH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew conducts a hoisting demonstration on Woody Island April 28, 2011, for about 65 students who are in Kodiak for the 17th Annual Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.

High school students from across Alaska and the Yukon gathered in Kodiak April 26 through 30 to learn about leadership and teamwork.

U.S. Coast Guard photo by Cmdr. Peter Van Ness.

KODIAK, Alaska – Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Marc Tunstall, an Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter pilot, discusses the capabilities of the aircraft with a group of high school students from across Alaska and the Yukon at Air Station Kodiak in Hangar 3, April 30, 2011.

The students are in Kodiak for the 17th Annual Rotary Youth Leadership Awards which emphasizes leadership, citizenship and personal growth.

U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Charly Hengen.

For more information contact Public Affairs Detachment Kodiak at 907-487-5700.

NEW ORLEANS -The Coast Guard rescued four men after their boat sank, in Terrebonne Bay, near Dulac, La., April 30, 2011.

Rescued were Kelvin Nguyen, Nhanh V. Nguyen, San V. Nguyen and Viet V. Nguyen.

At 4:20 a.m., watchstanders at Coast Guard Station Grand Isle received a call from Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, reporting that four men were in need of assistance after their boat, the Capt. Andre, a 77-foot fishing vessel, sank. 

A Coast Guard HH-65C rescue helicopter and crew from Air Station New Orleans was launched and arrived on scene at 5:37 a.m. The crew successfully hoisted and brought the men back to the air station in Belle Chasse, La.

All men were wearing a life jacket and the four reported no injuries or medical concerns.

Emergencies come without warning.  The Coast Guard recommends properly wearing a life jacket at all times while on the water as this can help increase your chances of survival during an unforeseen incident.

CRISFIELD, Md. – The Coast Guard is searching for a missing 59-year-old male in the waters off the Nanticoke River Friday.

Sector Baltimore watchstanders received a call at approximately 3 p.m., from a good Samaritan, reporting an aground 20-foot sailing vessel.

The Westside fire department, police department, two boat crews from Maryland Natural Resources Police along with a 25-foot Response Boat-Small crew from Coast Guard Station Crisfield and an HH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City responded to the report and are currently on scene searching for the man.

PADUCAH, Ky. – The Coast Guard and the Sikeston, Mo., Fire Department rescued six people, Wednesday, from high-water conditions in Morehouse, Mo.

At approximately 9 a.m., Coast Guard Sector Upper Mississippi River in St. Louis received a report of six people in imminent flood danger in the Morehouse area.  Two DARTs with a total of 12 crewmembers along with a fire rescue team from Sikeston responded to assist the impacted residents.

One person required medical attention, while the other five reported no medical concerns or injuries.

DARTs consist of six crewmembers that are capable of conducting operations in shallow water and urban environments. The DART teams are outfitted with three 16-foot shallow water boats, various rescue and communications equipment and supplies.

DART crewmembers in conjunction with state and local first responders have also assessed flood levels in various communities to render assistance to residents before evacuation is necessary.

The Coast Guard has staged the DARTs in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state of Missouri to minimize damage to property and to help save lives from historic flood levels

The Coast Guard crews are also standing by to assist with environmental hazards that may be caused by the flooding. DARTs from both Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Paducah and Coast Guard Sector Ohio Valley are on standby to deploy to assist persons in distress if necessary.

The Coast Guard urges residents to heed the warnings of local officials and not venture into unsafe conditions.

“With more rain expected, the Coast Guard is ready and eager to send our teams to help residents in the impacted communities of Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee,” said Cmdr. Claudia Gelzer, commanding officer of Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Paducah.

For official Coast Guard imagery of a DART assisting the affected communities, click on the links below from Coast Guard Visual Imagery:

PHOTO #1

PHOTO #2

PHOTO #3

**MEDIA NOTE: Contact Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Bill Colclough at (314) 603-5966 to arrange interviews with participating Coast Guard DART members or for any additional information.

PADUCAH, Ky. — The Coast Guard continues to allow all vessel traffic on both Kentucky Lake and Barkley Lake as river levels remain high.

The Coast Guard is monitoring the river levels present on both the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers on a 24-hour basis. Currently, there are no restrictions to navigation on either lake as a result.

The Coast Guard is working with the Army Corps of Engineers and several states and local agencies to minimize damage to property, structures and to help save lives from historic flood levels.

For more information, please contact Petty Officer 2nd Class Bill Colclough, Eighth Coast Guard District External Affairs, at 314-603-5966.

     
Editors note: To view or download video or high resolution photos please click on the corresponding image above.
All U.S. Coast Guard imagery by Chief Petty Officer Wayne Langley of Air Station Kodiak.

KODIAK, Alaska – A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Kodiak with an Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist aboard recovered a wayward acoustic mooring from a beach on the north end of Shelikof Strait Thursday.

The mooring, valued at about $20,000, was noticed by Kodiak-resident Mark Withrow while he was out on his boat in the strait and he reported his finding to ADF&G. It was located several hundred feet up on a beach in the splash zone just beyond the intertidal zone among a lot of beached logs.

“Because of the location we couldn’t have done this without the Coast Guard,” said Larry Van Daele, the Kodiak-based wildlife biologist who accompanied the aircrew. “Due to the lumber and the steep angle of the beach we couldn’t use a wheel plane to land on the beach, so ADF&G through our National Marine Fisheries Service counterparts requested Coast Guard assistance to retrieve the mooring.”

The Coast Guard crew flew from Kodiak to the beach under overcast skies and through rain showers. Upon their arrival they could not land and elected to lower the Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Petty Officer 3rd Class Chris Moore, to the beach. Once on the ground, Moore located the mooring and was able to carry it down the beach, free of the lumber, and maneuver it into a sling used for hoisting dewatering pumps. Petty Officer 3rd Class Devin Lloyd, and aviation maintenance technician, hoisted the mooring aboard the aircraft and then hoisted Moore back to the aircraft while pilots, Lt. Ray Slapkunas and Lt. Vincent Jansen, hovered the aircraft over the beach.

“It was easy and only took about 10 minutes,” said Moore. “It weighed about 240 pounds. I knew we might not be able to land, so that’s why I brought along the sling. It worked well to get the mooring aboard safely.”

The mooring is one of 10 located throughout Cook Inlet used to monitor the presence of beluga whales year-round. Each mooring has two acoustic instruments, an Ecological Acoustic Recorder (EAR) that records sounds at lower frequencies, including those of belugas, and a C-POD that recognizes and tallies the belugas’ higher frequency echolocation clicks in the vicinity of the mooring. Biologists from ADF&G deploy the moorings in the fall and retrieve them in the spring, then re-deploy them for the summer.

“This isn’t the first mooring we’ve lost and someone found later, but this is the farthest one has travelled,” said Bob Small, wildlife scientist and marine mammal coordinator with the ADF&G in Juneau, who manages the beluga acoustic research project. “This is the third year we’ve used these devices. They operate 24/7, 365 days a year and are much less expensive, and safer, than flying planes to locate and count the whales.”

According to Van Daele and Small the mooring will be evaluated and any repairs needed will be made before it is returned to service. It is unclear exactly why the mooring became free. It’s possible the acoustic release was triggered accidentally or it may have been released in a previous season and failed to come to the surface for retrieval.

“We won’t know until we open it up and look at the serial number, but we think it is a mooring from Knik Arm in Cook Inlet, either one that we released but failed to surface perhaps because it was trapped in the shifting mud and glacial silt, or a different mooring that perhaps was ripped up by the ice sometime this winter” said Small. “Cook Inlet is an extremely difficult environment to work in.”

The Coast Guard and ADF&G collaborate frequently to enforce state fisheries, prepare and respond to pollution incidents and conduct scientific research and support. In the last decade the Coast Guard in Kodiak has educated children attending the department’s annual salmon camp and helped biologists stock difficult to reach local lakes with rainbow trout fry on multiple occasions.

For more information please contact Petty Officer 1st Class Sara Francis at (907) 321-4501.

BALTIMORE – The Coast Guard hosted the 2011 Search and Rescue Conference at Coast Guard Sector Baltimore to improve cooperation between search and rescue agencies in the upper Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, Friday.

Approximately 100 members from the Coast Guard, Maryland Natural Resources Police, Maryland State Police, and supervisors from more than 25 emergency response centers gathered together for a daylong conference to discuss ways to improve communication between the agencies, establish best practices and introduced new systems that can be adopted between agencies.

“Today’s SAR conference brought together professionals from a wide variety of agencies to discuss policy, resources, communications and coordination,” said Capt. Mark P. O’Malley, commanding officer at Coast Guard Sector Baltimore. “Our common goal, to keep our citizens safe on the water and rapid, effective response when they need assistance, was strengthened through an open productive dialogue.  I am grateful that so many professionals took the time to attend today with singular determination to improve our service.”

The multi-agency conference this year specifically focused on communication between the Coast Guard and 911 emergency call centers, which receive a growing number of distress calls from cell phone users on the water.

“We have an opportunity to create an interoperability plan because of improved radio systems, so that when assets are on the water, whether they’re fire rescue, state police, EMS, or the Coast Guard, we can connect them together and talk to each other,” said Tony Rose, chief of communications center in Charles County. “Without reliable communication, our mission is at risk.”

The conference was also held as an open forum for agencies to explain their own policies when it comes to handling a distress call and establish the best practices between them. It also included lectures regarding the Coast Guard’s SAR organizational structure.

Following the conference, a Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter, a Maryland State Police Helicopter, a Coast Guard 25-foot Response Boat-small, a vessel from Maryland Natural Resources Police and an Anne Arundel Mobile Command Post were on display and available for tours.