page_title: USCGC Balsam
section_title: Commercial service
hierarchical_section_title: USCGC Balsam / Commercial service
caption_attribution_description: English: Two Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak C-130J Hercules aircraft and two MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crews coordinate efforts to perform a long-range medevac of an injured fisherman located approximately 300 miles northwest of St. Paul Island, Alaska, June 1, 2020. The man was safely transferred to awaiting emergency medical services personnel in St. Paul, who further transported him to Anchorage for further care. The ship was built as USCGC Balsam and converted into the F/V Baranof after decommissioning in 1975.
context_page_description: USCGC Balsam was a Cactus-class seagoing buoy tender in the United States Coast Guard. She operated in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, then saw service along the United States West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska. After her decommissioning in 1975, she was repurposed as a crab catcher-processor and is active in Alaskan fisheries as F/V Baranof.
context_section_description: Balsam was converted into an Alaskan crab catcher-processor boat, and renamed Baranof.  The conversion was done at a shipyard on the north shore of Lake Union in Seattle in 1978.  The conversion took approximately eleven months.  The ship was gutted and then rebuilt in its current form.  Baranof has diesel fuel capacity of 85,000 US gallons (320,000 l; 71,000 imp gal), which would be sufficient for four months operation under ideal conditions.  Her freshwater tanks can hold 25,000 US gallons (95,000 l; 21,000 imp gal) and these can be refilled by an onboard desalinization unit.  A new bow thruster was installed, powered by a Caterpillar 3406 TAT engine.  Two Caterpillar 353 TAT diesel generators were installed, each of which produces 300 kW of electrical power. A new main engine was installed as well, a Caterpillar 399 TAT engine that produced 1,200 hp (890 kW).  The buoy deck was modified to carry as many as 233 king crab pots.
  Baranof is not equipped with a seawater tank to hold her catch.  Instead, she has a complete processing facility to clean, cook, box, and freeze her catch.  She is equipped to process 30,000 pounds (14,000 kg) of crab per day. When the king crab market went into decline in the early 1980s Baranof was also equipped for longline fishing of sablefish.
  On May 19, 1981 Baranof was seized by the Alaska State Division of Fish & Wildlife Protection in Dutch Harbor.  It alleged that Baranof's harvest of king crab in 1979 and 1980 had been unlawful because it violated Alaska regulations.  Baranof's owners believed that the catch was lawful because, among other things, federal rather than state law applied to the offshore waters where the crabbing occurred.  While the ship was released to her owners a week later, litigation over the matter went on for years finally reaching the Alaska Supreme Court.  The court's decision in this case gave more power to the state to regulate fisheries beyond the 3-nautical-mile (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) territorial sea.  Since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of this case, the ruling on Baranof has had an impact on fisheries regulation nationwide.
  Baranof went aground on the coast of Unalaska on January 9, 2012.  Damage was limited to a 6-inch (15 cm) crack in the hull which was quickly patched allowing the ship to continue fishing.  One crew member attributed the limited damage to the ship's ice-strengthened hull. In June 2020, in two separate incidents, the Coast Guard executed long-range helicopter evacuations of seriously ill Baranof crewmen.
caption: Medevac from Baranof (ex-USCGC Balsam) in the Bering Sea, June 1, 2020
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