On February 23, 2006, 35-year-old Scott Thomas Trible was crewing aboard the 50-foot crab fishing vessel Northern Dawn out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The boat was working the Baridi tanner crab fishery near Volcano Bay, off Unalaska Island, when an automated distress signal from the vessel’s EPIRB activated at 5:31 a.m., placing the Northern Dawn about two miles off the Bering Sea side of the island.

Search units including a C-130, an HH-60 helicopter, the Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley and nearby fishing vessel Pinnacle responded. Rescuers recovered a life ring, the still-transmitting EPIRB and a small oily sheen on the water, but the Northern Dawn and its two crewmen, Trible and 43-year-old Franklin Richard, were not located. The search was later called off and both men are presumed to have drowned when the vessel sank.

The Alaska State Troopers opened a case into the disappearance, which remains unsolved. Does anyone have information about the Northern Dawn or its crew that could help clarify what happened that day?