Lost at Sea: An American Tragedy

Hundreds of men travel each year to the Bering Sea, braving frigid winds to secure their livelihoods from the unmerciful depths of the ocean. They go in search of crab, to to a job that allows them to earn tens of thousands of dollars for a few weeks work, but it extremely difficult -- and potentially deadly.

In Lost at Sea, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Patrick Dillon exposes the traditionally remote fishing industry by tracing the events leading up to the worst commercial fishing disaster in U.S. history and examining its impact, both on one small, close-knit community and on the industry as whole.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the families of the victims and other involved with fishing industry, as well as his own experience working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea, Dillon transports readers from the icy bleakness of the northern fishing waters, where the most ruthless forces of nature bear down upon the daring crews of fishing vessels, to the small town of Anacortes, where the victims’ families -- as well as those of others lost at sea -- are haunted daily by inexplicable tragedy.