Coast Guard icebreaker Storis stops in Juneau near end of 134-day Arctic deployment

The Coast Guard Cutter Storis arrived in Juneau Monday for a brief port call, nearly finished with a 134-day deployment to the Arctic Ocean and Alaska Theater of Operations. The ship covered more than 17,000 miles, the Coast Guard Arctic District said.

The crew's missions include search and rescue, fisheries law enforcement and homeland security, according to the district.

This year Storis, a medium icebreaker, provided persistent monitoring of Chinese research vessels operating over the U.S. extended continental shelf claim, an area of seafloor beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast, according to a Coast Guard Arctic District briefing to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Oct. 8. Four of five Chinese research vessels the district tracked were in the Bering Sea and Arctic from July through October, the briefing said.

Storis heads next to Seattle, its temporary homeport. The Coast Guard commissioned the cutter in Juneau in August 2025 and plans to base it there permanently once shore infrastructure improvements are complete. It is the Coast Guard's first polar icebreaker acquired in more than 25 years.

Last year Storis returned to Seattle after a 112-day inaugural patrol that took it north of the Bering Strait.

The Coast Guard announced in June that it will also homeport two Arctic Security Cutters in Kodiak and a third in Seward once infrastructure is complete, bringing the number of icebreakers to be based in Alaska to four. The first Arctic Security Cutter is scheduled for delivery in 2028.

An earlier cutter named Storis was based in Juneau from 1948 through 1957, conducting law enforcement and search and rescue, according to the Coast Guard Historian's Office.