On September 14, the Alaska State Troopers received a call about a missing member of a party that had traveled to Long Island to camp at the west end of Southern Lake. The subject had left camp headed south and had not returned. Troopers and the USCG Air Station sent thermal drones and an H-60 helicopter to search the south end of the island but were unable to locate the subject. That evening, the Troopers contacted KISAR to assist in the search, and on the morning of Sept 15, KISAR members Josh Boyle, Philip Tschersich, Shae Long, Nicolette Zalewski, Brian Baader, Chris Glade, and Monique Lewis mustered at the small boat harbor in Kodiak and boarded a Trooper skiff for the ride to Long Island.

The members landed at the party’s campsite, dropped gear, and prepared to search predetermined segments. KISAR segmented the search area into 3 zones, and performed line-abreast visual sweep searches for an unresponsive immobile subject through the first area on the south end of the island in the area deemed to have the highest probability of area (POA). Near the end of the sweeps they found a clue that could be positively attributed to the missing subject. A USCG H-60 aircraft arrived on scene and proceeded to search the coastline of the south end of Long Island with multiple passes. They performed an additional search of the clue area but did not find the subject. Having searched the first area with an estimated probability of detection (POD) that made the second search area the next highest POA, KISAR members regrouped at the gear cache and then proceeded to perform additional sweep searches north of Southern Lake.

After numerous sweeps across the island, KISAR planned on returning to the first search area to search it again. Near the end of this effort, KISAR was contacted by the Troopers who had received information that a civilian volunteer searcher in a skiff off the south end of Long Island near Refuge Rock had seen something suspicious on the shoreline at the base of a cliff. KISAR members split up with some proceeding directly to the new clue location while others hiked there via the gear cache to collect the remainder of equipment.

KISAR located the subject near the location given by the civilian volunteer. With calm seas, the Toopers were able to ease their skiff to the beach. They shuttled some KISAR members out to other civilian volunteer skiffs nearby, and then returned to collect the rest of the KISAR team and the remains. All KISAR member were back in the harbor at 1700.