Dan Magone / Credit: Lauren Rosenthal

After 40 years in western Alaska, Dan Magone is selling his namesake diving and marine rescue business.

Magone, 61, says he’s been kicking around the idea for a long time. Then, a new tide of Coast Guard vessel safety rules came along.

"We’re having so much trouble keeping up with the regulations," Magone says.

Magone has a shipyard and several response vessels at his shop in Unalaska. He says he’s spent millions of dollars trying to get those ships up to code. In the meantime, more companies started to show up in Alaska to do salvage and rescue.

"You have the competition and then you have the increase in magnitude of the response needs and the combination of those -- I just couldn’t ante up to that level," Magone says. "So that’s why I’m merging with Resolve."

Resolve Marine Group is a marine salvage and oil spill response company based out of Fort Lauderdale. They worked on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and helped clean up New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Magone won’t say how much Resolve paid him. And Todd Duke, a project manager for Resolve who’s been sent to Unalaska, says the company’s still working out the details out of the acquisition.

"Quite frankly, we are still developing our plan," Duke says. "We don’t expect anything to change much."

Resolve has plenty of international salvage experience, but relatively little in Alaska. That’s why they’re keeping Magone in charge of the shop in Unalaska, until he wants to retire. The business will switch its name to Resolve-Magone Marine Services.

Beyond that, Duke says the biggest shift is in the maritime resources that will be staged in Unalaska. Resolve has already sent a barge, a crane, and an ice-class anchor-handling rescue tug to join Magone’s fleet in Unalaska.

"We’re making the area better because we brought some assets that are different than the assets that are currently here," Duke says.

They’ll be put to use this weekend, when the Resolve crew joins Magone Marine in Dillingham to work on the salvage of the F/V Lone Star. The vessel’s been stuck at the bottom of the Igushik River since it sunk two months ago.