Unalaska, AK – The Coast Guard successfully rescued five men off of a grounded fishing vessel Thursday morning on St. George Island. The 112-foot F/V Mar-Gun contacted the Coast Guard at 4:11 am saying they had drifted aground on the beach and could not get off, but all crew members were fine.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Sara Francis said the Coast Guard deployed a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from nearby St. Paul. The crew safely hoisted all five men from the ship at 7:53 am and transported them to the clinic in St. Paul.

"There were no injuries reported. The vessel remains grounded with 15,000 gallons of diesel on board and they were fishing for pollock at the time of the incident."

Conditions at the time of rescue were 45 mile per hour winds with gusts of 57 miles per hour. Visibility in the light snow was about 1.5 miles. Seas were only 5 to 6 feet because the Mar-Gun was in a sheltered area on Staraya Beach, about 200 yards off of the north shore. The reason for the grounding is unknown.

The five crewmen were Tim Propst, Dan Hankins, Richard Post, Dan Stanfield and Paul Gore. The stern trawler is home-ported in Seattle but frequently delivers to Unisea in Unalaska.

Currently, the Coast Guard is working with the ship's company on developing a salvage plan and removing the 15,000 gallons of fuel and 668 gallons of lube oil.

"They'll probably have to get on scene and do an assessment to see if there are hull punctures or any other part of the hull that's compromised," said Francis. "Then they'll look at what the best approach is to either re-float the vessel or to remove it from the beach by other means."

An early afternoon assessment showed no pollution in the area and most of the fuel was moved from the hull to tanks in other parts of the ship. Two potentially sensitive sites - a sea lion rookery seven miles down the coast and an archeological site with ancient sea lion bones on shore - do not appear to be in any danger.

This is the second vessel grounding in just over a week. The F/V Icy Mist went aground on Akutan Island on February 25. All four crewmembers were safely rescued from the 58-foot fishing vessel. Francis says it's unusual to have two such similar events so close together, but the Coast Guard expects higher incident rates in the Bering Sea when so many different fisheries are active.

The Icy Mist is still on shore in Akutan and it is unclear at this point how it will be removed whether in pieces or as a whole. The diesel from the ship did leak out and could not be contained. However, diesel is known as a non-persistent oil that naturally breaks up with the help of bacteria and is cleaned up quickly by the environment. All of the oil was removed from the ship.