The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Anchorage

Four crew members of a fishing boat were plucked alive from a life raft in frigid, stormy seas Wednesday, hours after their vessel was reported in distress, a Coast Guard spokesman says. Five crew members died, and two remained missing.

A search continued for the remaining two crew members of the Katmai, a 93-foot fish processor based on Alaska's Kodiak island, Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read said.

Read said two more deceased crew members were located Wednesday night by a fishing vessel assisting the Coast Guard in the search. Three bodies were recovered earlier.

The water was 43 degrees when rescuers hauled the survivors out of the raft, Read said. He couldn't speculate on how long they were in the raft because it was not known exactly when they abandoned their boat. Still, he said, several factors helped them survive.

"That takes a lot of fortitude and a lot of heart," Read said. Their survival suits, their physical condition, and an effort to keep one another semi-warm and awake all could have helped them endure, he said.

The four survivors were discovered in the raft near the Amchitka Pass, which links the Bering Sea to the Pacific Ocean about 1,400 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The survivors were able to tell rescuers that all 11 crew members had been able to get into their survival suits before the Katmai sank, Read said.

Since no oil sheen typically seen from sunken vessels had been spotted, the Coast Guard had earlier been reluctant to say with certainty that the vessel had sunk.

"They said the boat did go down," Read confirmed.