The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Storis uses dynamic positioning to maintain its position near the Johns Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska, Aug. 5, 2025. Storis was commissioned on Aug. 10. (Ashly Murphy/U.S. Coast Guard)

The Coast Guard’s newest polar icebreaker arrived Friday in Seattle after 112 days at sea on its first patrol.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Storis, commissioned in August, left Pascagoula, Miss., on June 1 and sailed through the Panama Canal and the Pacific Ocean on its way to its first visit to the Arctic north of the Bering Strait.

“In the span of a few months, this crew has gained proficiency in the basics of operating the ship, and we were ready to challenge ourselves,” commanding officer Capt. Corey Kerns said in a service news release. “Storis is different than most Coast Guard cutters, and this crew is proud and excited to demonstrate its value to the service and the nation.”

Early last month, Storis entered icy waters for the first time as a Coast Guard cutter to relieve USCGC Healy and monitor the Chinese-flagged research vessels Jidi and Xue Long 2.

There is an increased demand for Arctic security using icebreakers because climate change has opened new sea lanes in the region. Russia and China have in recent months operated joint naval exercises in the Bering Sea near Alaska. 

Throughout the cutter’s inaugural deployment, the crew conducted helicopter operations, gunnery exercises, established numerous operational and administrative programs, and organized multiple community outreach events throughout six port calls, providing tours to more than 1,500 people.

The Storis is the first polar icebreaker that the Coast Guard has acquired in more than 25 years. The service only has two other such icebreakers — the 48-year-old heavy icebreaker Polar Star and the 27-year-old medium icebreaker Healy. Polar icebreakers are specifically designed to cut through ice in the Arctic. The service said it needs at least eight polar icebreakers to meet the operational needs in the polar regions.

Aside from the Polar Star, Healy and Storis, the Coast Guard has 21 domestic icebreakers and 16 ice-capable buoy tenders. Domestic icebreakers are smaller vessels designed to clear channels for commercial shipping during winter months in waterways such as the Great Lakes. Buoy tenders are capable of breaking up thin layers of ice.

For the next six weeks, the ship and crew will be in training, including a two-week underway phase with scheduled engagements in Victoria, Canada.

“We’re excited to return to family and friends and enjoy some of the experiences the Seattle area has to offer,” Kerns said. “It will be great to see the waterfront full of red hulls soon, too. But we still have a lot of training to do for our USCG crew to be ready to take full responsibility of the ship and will continue to work closely with our civilian shipmates to get us ready.”

Storis was formerly a commercial tow vessel purchased for the Coast Guard in 2024 for $125 million. It was given navigation, communications and defensive improvements, along with a new coat of paint in Coast Guard red and white colors.

Storis will be in Seattle temporarily, alongside the service’s other polar icebreakers, until infrastructure improvements are completed in Juneau, where the cutter will be permanently homeported.