The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Alert (WMEC 630) hosted a change of command ceremony Friday outside of the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria.
Rear Admiral Peter Gautier, deputy commander U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area, presided over the ceremony where Cmdr. Matthew Kolodica relieved Cmdr. Tyson Scofield as Alert’s commanding officer.
“It has been a privilege to lead the Alert crew over the last two years,” said Scofield. “Despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, maintenance on a 52 year old cutter, or the stormy conditions of the Pacific Northwest, this crew continuously rose to occasion to safely and successfully execute our missions.”
Following his command of Alert, Scofield will report to the Eisenhower School of National Security and Resource Strategy in Washington, D.C.
Kolodica’s reports to the Alert from the Coast Guard’s Maritime Force Protection Program office in Washington, D.C.
The change of command ceremony is a historic military tradition representing the formal transfer of authority and responsibility for a unit from one commanding officer to another. The event reinforces the continuity of command and provides an opportunity to celebrate the crew’s accomplishments.
Commissioned August 4, 1969, Alert was the last 210-foot medium endurance cutter built. Alert’s crew conduct search and rescue missions, counterdrug operations and enforce local, state, and federal fisheries legislation in support of the Coast Guard’s living marine resources mission. They operate from the Maritime Boundary Line in the North Pacific between Russia and the United States down to international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Alert is one of two 210-foot medium endurance cutters homeported in Astoria.
