Video Compilation: USCG Launches 2013 Best Video Contest

The U.S. Coast Guard has released its Top 10 video compilation for 2013, highlighting the year’s most compelling cases from the work done every day by America’s Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard also announced its 2013 Video of the Year contest in which the public is invited to vote for their favorite video. The contest begins Sunday, with voting open through Jan. 13, 2014. The Coast Guard’s official blog, the Coast Guard Compass, will publish one of the 10 videos each day along with commentary from a servicemember who participated in the mission.

“Most Coast Guard operations and missions aren’t caught on camera,” said Capt. Todd Prestidge, commanding officer of Training Center Cape May. “Much of our work occurs in the black of night during the most brutal weather conditions or thousands of miles away from U.S. shores in some of the most dangerous places on earth. This gives the people we serve an opportunity to see what Coast Guardsmen do every day.”

The Top 10 video compilation includes:

• A look into the Coast Guard’s rigorous basic training program at Training Center Cape May, where more than 80 percent of the Coast Guard’s enlisted force begin their careers. Recruits wait an average of more than six months to attempt the program where more than 30 percent are either reverted, rephrased or washed out of training.

• Coast Guard Cutters Tackle and Shackle break ice along the Penobscot River in Bangor, Maine, Feb. 21, 2013. These crews regularly break ice along Maine’s rivers to keep the waterway open for commercial traffic and to prevent flooding.

• An aircrew aboard an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., medevac a 47-year-old man from a 780-foot cargo ship being tossed in heavy seas approximately 200 miles east of the Chesapeake Bay March 6, 2013.

• Surfmen from Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment battle the waves of the Columbia River during surf drills. Surfmen are considered to be some of the best boat coxswains in the world and are famous for piloting vessels through breaking waves.

• An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., rescues a sailor 70 miles east of Kitty Hawk, N.C. The sailor asked for help after he hit his head and was injured.

• Coast Guard personnel participate in underwater egress training in an indoor pool at the Coast Guard Aviation Technical Training Center located in Elizabeth City, N.C. The Coast Guard implemented underwater egress training July 2013 at the ATTC aimed at increasing a member’s survivability in the event of a small boat capsizing.

• Coast Guardsmen use warning shots and disabling fire to stop a drug smuggling vessel off the coast of southern California Oct. 5, 2013. Coast Guardsmen found 31 bales of marijuana and apprehended two suspected smugglers when they boarded the vessel.

• An Air Station Kodiak HC-130 Hercules airplane crew conducts an Arctic Domain Awareness flight with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, July 16, 2013. Many people do not know of the extensive research that is being conducted in the Arctic.

• Coast Guard divers demonstrate new equipment that will improve safety for the divers and allow them to remain underwater longer and work in harsher conditions March 26, 2013.

• Coast Guard Cutter Hollyhock travels from the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore to its homeport of Port Huron, Mich., in this time-lapse video spanning Oct. 11 to 26, 2013. The Hollyhock spent more than three months in dry dock undergoing necessary maintenance to prepare it for a busy winter season on the Great Lakes.