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Fishermen in Newport, many of whom supply Eugene restaurants and markets, are heading into a dangerous crab season without a Coast Guard helicopter based in the city. The helicopter's relocation to North Bend comes as the community grapples with confusion over whether a federal ICE facility is being planned at the local airport.
This story was updated Nov. 25 to reflect a new court order requiring the Coast Guard helicopter to return to Newport.
Mist fell over hundreds of stacked wired pots and neon buoys along docks and on boats Sunday in Newport — a fleet preparing to head into rough winter seas when commercial crabbing season opens.
But fishermen are gearing up without a Coast Guard search-and-rescue helicopter based in the city, a discovery that stunned Taunette Dixon and her family, who will be fishing for Dungeness crab in a couple of weeks.
The helicopter, a staple for nearly three decades on Newport’s waterfront, was moved to North Bend. The move has caught many coastal fishermen — including crews who supply Eugene restaurants and markets — in broader uncertainty in Newport about a possible Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility at its municipal airport.
The stakes are a matter of life and death. With the Coast Guard helicopter now at a base in North Bend, if someone went overboard and needed help, it could take as long as two hours to arrive to the seas off Newport, Dixon said.
“When things happen, things happen fast. We can’t wait,” Dixon said. “Once one of our loved ones, one of our commercial fishing men or women, [is] in that water, they have minutes before they have a lack of use of their limbs.”
Crabbing is among the most dangerous professions in the United States — a risk made widely known in part by the Discovery Channel’s long-running show “Deadliest Catch,” which typically follows crews in Alaska. But fishing in waters off Newport is even more dangerous than in those up north.
Fishermen take the risk because it’s their livelihood. And in Oregon — thanks in large part to Newport — the fishing industry is a multimillion-dollar sector, driving calls at the state and national levels to protect the people who power it.
Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced Friday that the state of Oregon, Lincoln County and the Newport Fishermen’s Wives — an organization Dixon is part of — have sued in U.S. District Court in Eugene challenging the Coast Guard’s removal of its helicopter from the Newport Municipal Airport.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken issued a temporary order Monday night requiring the helicopter to return to Newport and remain there. It’s unclear whether it has come back yet.
‘In the dark’
For two weeks, uncertainty mounted after a defense contractor sent a vague letter to city officials in early November about the federal government potentially establishing an immigration detention facility on the central Oregon Coast.
City leaders said in a Nov. 10 public statement that they had received limited information from the Department of Homeland Security indicating the Newport Municipal Airport was on a list of potential sites. They followed with a Nov. 11 statement confirming the helicopter had been relocated to a base in North Bend.
In absence of clear communication, U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Val Hoyle requested a briefing from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to explain the Trump administration’s actions and intentions in Newport.
That didn’t happen.
The defense contractor — a company with a history of providing housing for military operations — has since backed away from pursuing land at the Newport Municipal Airport. But resident and pilot Dave Koester, who keeps a private hangar at the airport, still feels uneasy about the nearly three acres the federal government owns there.
“We know very little about it,” said Koester, who lived for years in Eugene before moving to the coast. He fears he’ll wake up one morning to find an ICE facility a few buildings down from him.
“We’re just opposed to an ICE facility here,” he said. “That is just a heart-wrenching possibility.”
Nearly 200 residents searching for answers gathered Sunday at a high school about a mile from the docks for a town hall with Wyden. He fielded questions about what the situation means for the region and for fishermen, though he had few concrete answers.
This isn’t the first time the Coast Guard has tried to rotate the helicopter out of Newport.
In 2014, the Fishermen’s Wives sued after the agency moved to close the air station to save money. They argued the move violated the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which bars the Coast Guard from cutting back its mission, and the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a formal review of the public-safety risks and potential environmental impacts, including oil spills.
Congress ultimately intervened, and President Barack Obama signed a law blocking the helicopter’s removal for years.
“They made a pledge that this wasn’t going to happen again,” Wyden told Lookout Eugene-Springfield after the town hall. “Everybody’s been in the dark.”
Wyden said the helicopter’s removal reflects broader problems within the federal administration, which he argued often benefits from natural-resource industries while failing to look after the people who work in those industries.
Newport’s commercial fishing industry ranks among the nation’s top ports for catch and value, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. State figures show that 312 boats fished in the 2023 crabbing season, hauling in nearly $85 million worth of Dungeness.
From Newport’s docks to Eugene’s plates
Fisherman’s Market in Eugene gets most, if not all, of its Dungeness crab from Newport, said owner Ryan Rogers. He’s been a commercial fisherman for 40 years and spent eight winters in the tempestuous Bering Sea.
Winter is when these spider-like crustaceans drift toward shore with the currents — and Rogers said he would rather return to Alaska’s freezing harbors than fish out of Newport.
That’s because of the Yaquina Bay bar, the volatile line where river water meets ocean swells and one of the most dangerous stretches of water on the Oregon Coast. After crossing it, fishermen still have to travel 20 to 60 miles offshore, hours away, to reach the crab grounds.
“[In Alaska] we drive out of a harbor,” he said. “And crossing the bar is the craziest thing. I owe those guys the utmost respect that do that every day.”
Those are people like Mark Newell, who has been fishing and processing catch from Newport for nearly 50 years, supplying Capella Market, Newman’s Fish Co. and Fisherman’s Market.
“You just never know when that big rogue wave or series is going to come,” said Newell, who was rescued when his own boat capsized in the 1970s, recalling windows shattering, embedding shards of glass in his hand.
Earlier this year, a 40-foot fishing vessel capsized off Newport — a boat half the size of some commercial vessels built for Alaska’s seas. The Coast Guard helicopter helped rescue a captain and two crew members; a fourth fisherman was never found.
“I’ve had a lot of scary bar crossings out of Newport and out of Astoria,” Newell said. “It was white-knuckle. You’re praying.”
Newell said he has lost roughly 40 friends over his 50 years on the water. Many crews train each year with flotation devices and other gear, but that doesn’t eliminate the risks of hypothermia, drowning or the need for rapid rescue.
That’s why the helicopter is so critical, he said, warning its absence will cost lives among the fleet he buys from. Other boats sell to processors such as Pacific Seafood, which supplies Costco and other regional retailers.
But no matter the weather — helicopter nearby or two hours away — when the season starts on Dec. 16, they still have to work, Dixon said.
“There is nothing we can do to change the plans of fishing,” she said. “We have to go and fish on the day it opens.”
