Flotsam float from The Kaisha Lenae

This day-glo orange and green float is one of my more exciting flotsam finds. It was stuck back behind logs in an eddy. It's about 15 inches long and was attached to a lot of rope. There's a green plastic tag attached to the bottom that says "059. Kaisha Lenae. 96263. 2014-15 ODFW."

What does that mean? ODFW must be the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. 2014-15 must mean it belongs to some research project for those years. I thought maybe 96263 was the project number, 059 was this float number and Kaisha Lenae was perhaps a research scientist.

But upon some googling, I discovered that The F/V Kaisha Lenae is a 48-foot commercial fishing vessel. It was built in 1988 by LeClercq Marine Construction and its Port of Call is Ilwaco, Washington (more than an hour away on the Pacific Coast of Washington's Long Beach Peninsula and north of the Columbia River). I found the name of the current owner and saw that he purchased it from where it had been used previously in Seward, Alaska. I also came across on LinkedIn the name of a fellow who is a deckhand on this ship. I looked up the address and phone number of the owner and called and left a message, asking if he wanted this back and mentioning my blog and writing a story about it. He never returned the call.

  This is not The Kaisha Lenae but it's an image I found on the web of what a 48-foot fiberglass commercial fishing vessel looks like.

So the story of The Kaisha Lenae and the ODFW float is still a mystery. Where was the boat, what was it doing and why and how did this float end up along the Multnomah Channel?  For now the float makes a very colorful addition to the wall of art on my tenderhouse.