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Storis departs Juneau on Tuesday after Arctic mission focused on national security
Coast Guard evaluating housing solutions to allow homeporting in Alaska’s capital as ship heads to Seattle for another winter of upgrades
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Storis left Juneau early on Tuesday due to incoming weather after arriving Saturday. It will spend its winter in Seattle, its temporary homeport.
The ship’s brief stop in Alaska’s capital city came after a 134-day deployment to the Arctic Ocean and Alaska Theater of Operations. The current 86-member Coast Guard crew is not expected to grow much larger, Capt. Corey Kerns told media on Tuesday, with him estimating a maximum of 90 people. The Storis has 117 beds, but the ship will also deploy with temporary crew members, so the number of beds doesn’t equal the number of people.
With shoreside support, that means there are about 120 Coast Guard personnel expected to need housing, plus their families, according to official estimates. The incoming crew size was initially estimated at 190 when the ship was acquired in 2024.
The ship’s homeport doesn’t change its mission or priorities, Kerns, commanding officer of Storis, told media aboard the ship on Tuesday morning.
“I think just in general, the Coast Guard is growing, we're getting a lot of ships, and we've got to build the infrastructure out in a lot of places at the same time. And I think we're gonna struggle with it. We're not gonna get it perfect, so these things probably won't happen like right when we need them,” he said.
For example, the icebreakers Polar Star and Healy are in Seattle right now, and because Base Seattle is under construction, the Storis will have to head to another pier without power and run on generators until the Polar Star heads south.
“But that’s to upgrade Seattle for the future for more icebreakers, more ships coming. They’re doing that work now, and now we have to do that in Juneau, Kodiak,” Kerns said.
Last week, City Manager Katie Koester announced the Storis won’t be homeported in Juneau unless sufficient housing for crew exists. Efforts to address that need are continuing, a Coast Guard spokesperson told the Juneau Independent on Tuesday.
“The Coast Guard is aware of Juneau’s current housing supply and the potential impacts of assigning additional members to the area,” said Pam Manns, a Public Affairs Officer with the Arctic District. “The Coast Guard is actively evaluating solutions to accommodate incoming personnel and dependents, partnering with the community to identify feasible housing solutions and development opportunities, and gauging private sector interest in supporting projected housing needs.”
She said multiple developers expressed interest and a detailed request for proposals would be released in the near future as funds are received to support Coast Guard family housing needs, as well as supporting additional phases of facilities and infrastructure improvements.
Engineering planning was completed and an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act is ongoing. The Coast Guard has an interagency agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and transferred funds for initial construction activities.
NOAA is the contracting authority and will award and execute the contract with Coast Guard oversight. Phase 1 includes construction of a new pier and recapitalization of the existing wharf to support future homeporting of Coast Guard Cutter Storis.
The design-build contract for pier construction is expected to be awarded by the end of December, with work expected to be completed in 2030, according to Manns.
Future phases are planned to support maintenance facilities and housing for incoming families.
‘Bridge the gap to the future’
The Storis is unique in being previously known as the commercial vessel Aiviq, which was used for oil exploration. Kerns said because of this, they still need support from the civilian crew to operate the ship and might for years to come.
“They’re still a vital part of our crew for addressing both equipment casualties and teaching us,” Kerns said.
Last year, Cmdr. Phillip Baxa managed a multi-million-dollar contract to hire Edison Chouest Offshore civilians to help the Coast Guard crew become acquainted with their newest icebreaker. The contract was originally set to end on Nov. 14, 2025, with an anticipation that it would be extended another six months.
Ten members of the civilian crew Edison Chouest Offshore are still aboard, with Kerns pushing for their contract to be extended up to another five years. This is the first time the Coast Guard has used a hybrid crew of civilian and Coast Guard personnel.
The civilian crew will not need housing in Juneau, Kerns said.
“The hard part for the fast acquisition and having the ship was not having the fully planned out training to get the Coast Guard crew up to speed,” he said. “And so over the last year we’ve done a lot, and the uniform folks are very competent in operating and running Storis. So we did shrink the Edison Chouest footprint, but we’re also about to have our first big turnover summer. And so then a lot of us who spent the last year getting trained and everything is going to leave this summer.”
He said eventually, the Coast Guard needs to push out training to give their members the same exposure to the systems the civilian crew is familiar with.
“Until that happens they’re our embedded onboard trainers that are always here and then when stuff goes a little wrong — when the control systems have problems — they’re much more adept at like, ‘Oh, this is how we fix this, or this is how we can reset this,’” Kerns said, adding operating procedures and instructions are being documented.
He said the crew learned alongside the Edison Chouest shipmates that they were able to improve the ship’s icebreaking capabilities earlier this year before returning to Alaska by maximizing power output from the engines.
“You could definitely tell the difference,” Kerns said. “We actually probably broke more heavier, stronger ice more consistently than when we did the ice testing run in April.”
During their recent trip to the Arctic, they faced a different logistical challenge.
“We did a port visit to Nome just to test out what we could and couldn’t do up there. And certainly the ship is too big to tie up in the port of Nome, so we were anchored off,” he said. “So that presented some challenges. We were able to get fuel and parts and everything, but as soon as the wind kicks up there, you’re not protected, and so we had a couple rough days sitting off the pier there.”
He said the Port of Nome being built into a deep-water port would benefit the ship’s operations.
The majority of the Storis deployment took place above the Arctic Circle and focused on monitoring foreign research vessel activity in the extended continental shelf, group sails working as part of Operation Tundra Merlin, a recurring Arctic homeland‑defense operation, and law enforcement.
The Storis’s law enforcement team boarded its first vessel to enforce maritime laws and regulations, which Kerns called a big step.
“Understanding that’s probably the future of what the icebreaking fleet is going to be. We have to be multi-mission,” he said. “We have these capabilities that we bring to the table for our civilian leadership to be able to do law enforcement in the high north maybe someday if you need it. It’s not there right now, but as traffic and activity grows up there it will be.”
Kerns said the Storis led the way this year in addressing how the Coast Guard responds to a changing security environment and demonstrating national security posture. He said it is a difficult adjustment for some crew members.
“We have to do what our nation needs at the time,” he said. “It’s not like this is a super pressing need. It’s happening gradually. So the change is happening and we’re just seeing it in real time, like this is now a mission set for us.”
While the icebreaker Healy is built and designed for scientific research, Kerns said the Storis surveys other vessels accessing the Arctic within the United States’ exclusive economic zone.
Kerns said, “The concern is like, ‘What is the research for? What gain are they going for? And you have to have icebreaker capability to work in that area, to even monitor what they’re doing, so that’s basically what Storis is for. We can get into the ice and we can see what they’re doing.”
Kerns said a focus for the future is to continue missionizing the Storis by adding more military communications gear over the spring in Seattle, but the recent journey proved the ship can deploy with science gear, drones and deployable Conex boxes.
He added the Storis still cannot land a helicopter on its flight deck yet, which limits search and rescue capabilities. He spoke with Rear Adm. Bob Little while in Juneau about this challenge.
“It’s just going to have to be a different approach to how we do flight quarters and that’s like the hard thing because we have to determine what’s OK, because it’s not going to be routine. So then, how do we make a new thing safe?” Kerns explained, saying the makeup of the originally civilian ship changes how the helicopter would land and how aviation training is conducted.
“We’re just talking about different ways to address it through the command structure of the headquarters to get the right understanding of the right mindset, which is we bought a civilian ship, we’ve made it operational all these other ways. There’s a path to yes for that stuff too.”
On the other hand, the ship’s unique background gives it an unexpected asset.
“We did an underway refuel. We demonstrated how we could refuel another Coast Guard cutter, which could become an answer to future far north logistics problems,” he said. “You have this large ship that holds a lot of fuel, and when the ASCs (Arctic Security Cutter) come, they’re going to be smaller and not have the range.”
Kerns said the ship will undergo maintenance in Seattle, including engine overhauls, painting and engineering upgrades, like implementing a new special system for holding Connex boxes.
“We’ll go home, hug the families, spend some quality time at home. But then it gets right into ‘How do you get the ship ready for the next summer?’” Kerns said.
As progress is made on building 11 new icebreakers promised to the Coast Guard, the Storis could eventually transition to a support ship, he said.
“We’re supposed to bridge the gap to the future. So how long does she operate into that future? I don’t know, but as those things come out I think you’ll start to see the value in that,” he said.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or 907-723-9356.
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