Coast Guard Crewmember Goes Missing in Eastern Pacific

 

The U.S. Coast Guard has launched a search for a crewmember of the cutter USCGC Waesche who has gone "unaccounted for" during operations in the Eastern Pacific. 

Waesche is conducting the search herself, along with her embarked helicopter aircrew and the ship's aerial drone. Assets from other agencies are also involved in the search, according to USCG Pacific Area. 

The Coast Guard did not provide additional information about Waesche's location, citing national security, but the cutter's AIS transceiver is turned on and appears to show her position in the smuggling transit zone off the southern coast of Mexico. 

Waesche returned to her home port in Alameda in August after a 120-day patrol in the Western Pacific. The crew's Facebook page shows that the cutter got under way again in December and spent Christmas at sea.

In addition to normal rotations in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean, the Coast Guard has announced a "surge" of available assets to deploy on counter-drug and counter-migration missions, as directed by President Donald Trump. The president has ordered the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to take "all appropriate and lawful action to deploy sufficient personnel along the southern border."