Diving deep to find Benjamin Stepetin three months after his disappearance
- Mark Sabbatini
- Oct 2
- 6 min read
Two-day underwater search along cruise dock unsuccessful, but family raising funds to explore more of the channel while continuing to look on land
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
After rumors that missing Benjamin "Benny" Stepetin had been seen along the downtown cruise ship dock, his brother hired a dive team for an in-depth underwater search.
The last confirmed sighting of Stepetin, 42, was June 22 on Front Street downtown. He was reported missing to the Juneau Police Department on June 29. Widespread notices and searches followed, with plenty of tips coming in, including reported sightings on the dock near the downtown Juneau Public Library.
"This is where everybody (says) — 95% of all the rumors end up right over here," said Carl Stepetin Sr., one of Benjamin’s brothers, while aboard a commercial diving boat where crew members were guiding a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) under the dockside waters. "With 95% of all these stories coming, they got it somewhere."
Crew aboard the 56-foot-long dive-support vessel Two Sisters, operated by Enviro Tech Diving Inc., spent a total of more than 12 hours on Sept. 14 and 15 searching along the seabed and submerged fixtures of the dock, using the ROV and a human diver. The video screen of the ROV’s remote control showed a constant flow of snow-like small debris flowing past as the submersible explored surfaces that were largely indistinct muck, with a few obvious signs of litter or other items from the many hundreds of thousands of cruise passengers walking along the dock each year.
Trying to find a body that may have been in the water for three months is a considerable challenge, said Caleb Lee, Enviro Tech’s environmental manager, who said it’s his first time conducting this kind of a search.
"Your mindset is you could be looking for bone material or looking for personal possessions, because we don't know most likely what we’ll find — a shoe, or wallet, or clothing," he said.
Enviro Tech is more commonly involved in tasks such as environmental monitoring, including water quality sampling, recovering sunken vessels, and underwater repairs of facilities like docks, said Tim McGurl, captain of the Two Sisters.
"This job is different because there's emotion involved," he said.
McGurl said his involvement began when Carl Stepetin approached him at a grocery store in the western Alaska village of St. Paul, asking if the company would search the waters along the dock and offering to pay for the effort.
"I ran it by the owner, Tim Jewell, and he thought that is a large area, but he knows the families, who they are, for years," McGurl said. "And he said, ‘We're going to be up that way and I'd like to help.’ And we were all on board."
There were plenty of reasons for doubts about finding Benjamin Stepetin — the sightings weren’t confirmed, Juneau’s strong tides could have carried anything on the seabed miles away and there was only a few feet of visibility on the video screen as the claw-equipped submersible made its way along the dock. But McGurl, who’s been a vessel captain for 38 years, said improbable searches have been successful before.
"We were in Glacier Bay National Park last year when we had a job looking for a sunken yacht," he said, referring to a vessel that sank in 2022. "A yacht tried to go up into a really shallow river. They wanted to go look at a glacier up there…we had a general idea where it was, it was about seven hours and Caleb found it. He had a good strategy for looking it and that was a needle in a haystack as well."
Carl Stepetin said he paid $8,000 for the underwater search because family and others have spent months exploring all of the land areas they can think of, as well as checking under the dock and similar areas on surface waters using a skiff, without any signs of where their brother might be.
"We did a couple raffles, a dance from Saint Paul Island — from my hometown — and then $3,000 of it came from my tribe, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island," he said.
A GoFundMe for search efforts has also been set up by Carl and his brother, Martin Stepetin Sr.
Other search efforts are ongoing and the family continues to post updates online in the hopes of getting further tips from the community.
"We've searched under the docks again," Carl Stepetin said. "We're starting the beaches again."
Benjamin Stepetin is still listed on the Juneau Police Department’s missing persons website. He was homeless during the two years before he was reported missing, but family members said while he could be hard to locate at times, he never disappeared for more than a few days.
Carl Stepetin said he hasn’t heard anything from JPD officials recently about any further developments in the case.
The first day of the search by the Two Sisters took place with the boat docked at the Intermediate Vessel Float near the Goldbelt Tram, with the ROV being guided northward along the dock toward the library that Carl Stepetin said was the focal point of the rumors of his brother’s sighting. Lee guided the ROV slowly, trying to keep the line it was tethered to clear of entanglements, and occasionally having to do some tricky maneuvering with the twin-stick controls when the line caught on a dock support post or other object.
On the wall of the boat’s cabin was a large digital map showing an overhead view of the harbor and the ROV's current location. The video of the submersible’s voyage was recorded so it can be analyzed for a more detailed analysis if the need or want arises.
The first day of searching started mid-afternoon and continued until darkness made searching no longer practical. On Monday morning, the Two Sisters parked a few hundred yards on the other side of the library near Merchants Wharf, sending the submersible south.
Operating the ROV during the second day was Josh McKinney, Enviro Tech’s assistant environmental manager, and he said that, much like Sunday, there weren’t a lot of notable items spotted in the murky waters.
"A bicycle, a shopping cart, trash, a broken iPhone, that's really all we have found," he said.
In addition to the submersible’s search, diver Christopher Clark also spent about two hours checking parts of the dock area. He said exploring in person allows for observations that aren’t possible with a robotic vessel.
"You can smell, you can also hear and you can feel better between the piles," he said. "That was the main thing because this tether will get tangled up pretty good. I was even getting tangled up, just because the piles have a lot of marine growth on them."
Clark, like the other crew members, said such a search was a first-time experience, so knowing what to look for and how was largely intuitive.
"I was just kind of going with whatever I could, feeling around with my hands," he said. "I didn't expect to be digging or pulling anything out — just document where it’s at in case it’s a legal issue or something."
Carl Stepetin, in an interview Thursday, said that while the dive team didn’t find his brother during last month’s search, it was still a worthwhile effort.
"That was a great search," he said. "They did a thorough job, he just wasn't in the area. And there's so many variables with cruise ships, the tides and everything. I think we just missed him."
Additional searches by friends and family have occurred during the weeks since along a stretch of the waterfront extending from near the U.S. Coast Guard station to the fuel docks beyond the cruise ship piers, Carl Stepetin said. He said he’s also trying to raise money for future dives in other parts of Gastineau Channel.
"It's all just going to be whoever I can get to give me money," he said. "I'll figure it out. I’ll start that again when I get home. I’ve got a few ideas and hopefully they’ll pan through."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
