George August Brandenburg, 39, was last seen aboard his 98-foot crab fishing vessel Barbarossa on February 10, 1991, about 30 to 40 miles west of St. George Island, Alaska. Brandenburg had moved from Minnesota in the 1980s and bought the Barbarossa after working his way up from crewman to skipper. He was fishing opilio crab with five crewmembers—Donald Bright, Dennis Olberding, Timothy Schmitt, Darrell Gross, and Brian McPherson—when the boat’s final, anonymous Mayday came in about 1:00 a.m.: May-Day, we’re going over, we’re about 40 miles west of St. George Island, please hurry. Through a process of elimination the Coast Guard identified the call as coming from the Barbarossa.

Search aircraft and ships found nothing. Harsh conditions—30-knot winds, 14-foot seas and reports of waves of at least 20 feet—contributed to the failure to recover the vessel or crew. The Barbarossa carried a 10-person self-deploying life raft, six survival suits with strobes, and three emergency beacons, yet no survivors or wreckage were found. The official investigation concluded the vessel was lost to the sea, and the disappearance remains a tragic unresolved loss for the families and fishing communities.

Did anyone in the Bering Sea fishing community in 1991 have information about the Barbarossa’s last hours or the storm that night?