Rescue Ready

Photographer Justin Bastien spent two weeks documenting the United States Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers

Photos by Justin Bastien

Show All Slides
Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

USCG Rescue Swimmer Jon Kreske back on dry land after a few tough hours of high surf training operations (Kodiak Island, Alaska).

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

Jon Kreske practicing free-fall techniques that are used to exit the helicopter in rescue operations over the open ocean.

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

A free-fall drop from a USCG helicopter over Alaskan waters.

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

A USCG rescue helicopter as seen from the survivor's perspective in the cold Alaskan ocean.

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

USCG Rescue Swimmer training in the pool facility at Kodiak Station, Alaska.

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

High surf operations training in large waves in the surf zone off the southwestern coast of Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Justin Bastien Rescue Workers

A MH-60 helicopter flying over USCG search-and-rescue personnel during cliff rescue operations in the mountains above Kodiak, Alaska.

When photographer Justin Bastien set out to document the day-to-day lives of the United States Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers in Kodiak, Alaska, he wasn’t just interested in spending a day with the crew. He wanted to get as close as possible to what they have to go through to become one of the United States’ most elite rescue operation teams. That meant not just photographing the grueling training regimen these men and women endure every day to prepare themselves to save lives—whether by land, air, or sea—but even participating in some of those exercises as well. 

Enter the sweat cage. 

“When a helicopter crashes in water, it flips upside down instantly and starts sinking,” Bastien explains. “So they do this thing called the ‘sweat cage’ to simulate it. They put you in this cage in a swimming pool with a door that closes and seatbelt you in with no mask or snorkel. Then they flip it upside down and shake it, and you have to find a way to escape.” 

Bastien, an extreme surfer, mountain climber, and one-time catalog athlete for Patagonia, was no stranger to treacherous surf. When the guards got it that he was having a little too much fun with the regular sweat cage, they moved him on to the “advanced sweat cage,” where trainees are ziptied into the seatbelt with the door locked and given a small emergency air tank for breathing (It doesn’t actually work upside down, so you have to learn how to take short breaths.)

After two weeks spent with the Rescue Swimmers, including flying with them, running up a mountain, and participating in surf-ops training, Bastien produced a portfolio of photographs chronicling the absolute commitment these Rescue Swimmers bring to their mission: saving lives. 

The project, first published in the September issue of The Red Bulletin (“48 Hours With the Alaska Coast Guard”) came about while Bastien was visiting his cousin, Aaron Bastien. Aaron happens to be in the coast guard, serving at Air Station Kodiak. Bastien has taken a few trips there to go hiking and surfing, and to explore the island. “It’s such a wild, raw, beautiful place,” he says. 

They took a tour of the coast guard station one day, and Bastien was floored by what he saw. “These guys are doing such incredible work there,” he says. “There’s all these really cool helicopters, and they fly and train there, doing an amazing public service job. I knew we had to do a story on it.” 

After a few months of back and forth between Bastien, The Red Bulletin, and the coast guard, he put together a proposal for a photographic series that would focus on the Rescue Swimmers who train there. It took about a year to get the project off the ground as they worked through the logistics, including both official and nonofficial tests Bastien took to qualify him to participate in the exercises and individual interviews he conducted with the Rescue Swimmers. 

He also faced daunting logistical challenges of his own: How exactly do you photograph a man jumping out of a helicopter mid-air into the Arctic Ocean while hanging out the aircraft’s door in a harness, with 130+-miles-per-hour rotor wash hitting your face? Or take a picture of the helicopter from below, from in the water, while wearing a head-to-toe wet suit with just your nose and lips sticking out, buffeted by the waves? 

“I had a hard time with equilibrium,” he says, “because my ears were full of water and I had a hood on and a headset in my ear, and I was looking through the viewfinder of the camera with 130-per-hour winds and water spraying me at that velocity. I was constantly ducking my water housing to clear off the front lens element, and then while that was happening, I wasn’t looking behind me and waves would come up and throw me in the surf.” 

On some days, the Rescue Swimmers treated Bastien as a victim they were coming to rescue, using him in real-time training exercises as a dummy while he documented it. 

The Rescue Swimmers endure these training exercises on a regular basis in some of the worst possible conditions—the same conditions to which they typically have to respond in an emergency. Yet some could spend years without actually responding to a substantial rescue. It depends on the luck of the draw with any given shift. One Rescue Swimmer could have three rescues in a year; another could have none in three years. Even so, the level of training these men and women undergo to prepare themselves for a crisis is as rigorous as anything in the United States military, and as dedicated. 

But it’s not all about endurance and pushing through limits. The Rescue Swimmers emphasize teamwork and team efficiency. After every operation, such as a flight for the day, the whole crew sits down together—the pilot, the copilot, the flight mechanic, and the Rescue Swimmer—and they evaluate how each member of the team did for that operation, and what they could do better. Everyone is working collectively to help improve each individual’s role. 

That degree of open dialogue, for the sake of achieving a team’s efficacy and preparedness to get the job done, had a big impact on Bastien. “You can imagine if at the end of every day at work, you sat down with your colleagues to have a very clear and open discussion that was honest, and hopefully not politically driven, to get clear on, ‘Hey, what could I have done better, and how could I have better worked with you as a team?’ They do that after every mission.” 

During the project, Bastien developed not only an appreciation of what it looks like to save lives from a Rescue Swimmer’s perspective, but also from the perspective of the person being rescued, of seeing that helicopter come for you when you’re flipping around, helpless in the surging waves. 

“The stories of these rescues are incredible,” he says. “I didn’t realize the extent of the training that they have, and the training and education they have to go through, and the high level of professionalism and standards they are held to. There are people out there who are literally done if these guys don’t show up.”