Boat sinking

Tightening the requirements for safety training and practice drills should be made mandatory. In the long run a little extra time could save lives. May they RIP.





Sinking may bring new focus to fishing boat safety rules

ROUGH SEAS WERE REPORTED

By Kirk Moore • STAFF WRITER • and • THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • March 26, 2009

Satellite and weather buoy data indicated a rapid build-up of heavy seas around the time the 71-foot scallop fishing boat Lady Mary sank 75 miles offshore, killing two North Carolina fishermen whose father owned the boat, and leaving four others unaccounted for.
http://c7.zedo.com/img/bh.gif?n=162&...05&s=1&l=1&t=i http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-...tureAndSociety

It's one of the worst commercial fishing accidents in the mid-Atlantic region since eight men died in two New Jersey clam boat sinkings in 1999. A decade after those accidents prompted a national review of fishing vessel safety, the Coast Guard has yet to formally propose stability requirements and testing for boats between 50 feet and 79 feet in length.

Two victims of the Lady Mary sinking are Roy Smith Jr. and Timothy Smith, sons of the boat owner, Roy Smith Sr. of Bayboro, N.C.
Still missing was Roy Smith Sr.'s brother, Tarzan Smith, 59, of Wildwood, N.J.; and crewmen Frenki Credle, Frank Reyes, and William Torres. Their ages and hometowns were not immediately available.
Only one crew member, Jose Luis Arias, 57, of Raleigh, N.C., is known to have survived.

"We're all going to wait and see what the end might be," said Credle's brother, Edward Credle of Bayboro, N.C. "We have been praying."
Only a Coast Guard cutter remained active in the search Wednesday afternoon after helicopters were called back to base, having covered 225 square miles of ocean and finding nothing. Wednesday night, the Coast Guard suspended the search for the four missing crew members.

Earlier, Rear Adm. Fred M. Rosa Jr., commander of the Coast Guard Fifth District, who sent condolences to the families of the dead Wednesday afternoon, said "time and environmental conditions are against us" in looking for survivors.
All seven crewmen wore survival suits, survivor Arias told the Coast Guard. But Steven L. Labov, chief of the U.S. Search and Rescue Task Force, has said expected survival time would be less than six hours in 40-degree water.
A number of scallop crews worked this week across a swath of ocean around an area they call the Elephant Trunk, so called for its appearance on navigation charts.

"I was talking to them yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon. It (the sea) was gnarly, it was nasty," said Ernie Panacek, manager at the Viking Village commercial docks in Barnegat Light.

Rosa said a fishing boat in the area reported hearing a faint radio distress call at 5 a.m. Tuesday, but did not hear a boat name or location. The Coast Guard launched helicopters after receiving a 7:30 a.m. transmission from the boat's automatic emergency radio beacon, and Arias and the Smith brothers were found about an hour later.

Coast Guard officers called oceanographers at Rutgers University for help forecasting the ocean currents and winds to guide their search, and to reconstruct weather conditions on the morning Lady Mary sank, said professor Scott Glenn of the university's Institute of Marine and Coastal Studies.

"They wanted to get an idea of what conditions were like. What we did see is the waves came up pretty quickly" Tuesday morning, assistant professor Josh Kohut said. The institute operates a sophisticated ocean sensing laboratory that draws in data from weather buoys, satellites and radar that measures wave heights, and can assemble it all into detailed reports and charts.
The university has been working with the Coast Guard for years to develop the system as a search and rescue tool and it's planned to be ready for regular use this spring, Kohut said.

Other casualties among experienced fishermen have shaken the fleet in recent months. In January, Point Pleasant Beach captain Bill Meldrum was fatally injured when his legs became tangled in a cable and winch on his trawler Lydia J. Captain Phil Ruhle of Rhode Island, a well-known figure in the fishing industry, was lost last July when his 80-foot boat Sea Breeze capsized and sank 45 miles east of Atlantic City. Ruhle's two crewmen survived.

Bob Garrett, the commercial fishing vessel safety coordinator for the Coast Guard's Fifth District, said there's no real clear trend in the region's safety issues. He noted the recent accidents involved very different vessels and gear types.

"The Sea Breeze was a mid-water trawler, while Lady Mary was a scallop dredger," Garrett said.

A trawler catches finfish while pulling a net; a scalloper catches shellfish by pulling a heavy steel dredge over the sea floor.
A report on the Sea Breeze loss is now undergoing review at Coast Guard headquarters prior to its release, he said.
The Coast Guard also is working on a new rule proposal that would tighten requirements for safety training and regular practice drills among fishing crews, Garrett said.

Better training was one recommendation from the Fishing Vessel Casualty Task Force, an expert panel assembled by the Coast Guard in early 1999 after the clam boat sinkings. Another recommendation was to extend the threshold for mandatory stability and testing requirements down to all boats at least 50 feet in length — a category that covers a majority of the commercial fleet, the task force report authors noted.
The Coast Guard has indicated over the years that it could move toward enlarging that requirement for stability testing, but it has not done so. The Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988 — enacted after an earlier spate of fishing boat accidents — gives the Coast Guard authority to mandate new requirements.
Another initiative from the 1999 report was renewed emphasis on voluntary vessel safety examinations, where trained examiners and captains go over boats from bow to stern in search of safety deficiencies.

"The numbers are pretty much along the historic levels," said Garrett, who estimates 750 to 1,000 vessels a year are examined in the district's jurisdiction from the Shark River in New Jersey south to the Carolinas border. "We're out there all the time, reaching out to the fishermen and making them aware."

"I was talking to them yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon. It (the sea) was gnarly, it was nasty," said Ernie Panacek, manager at the Viking Village commercial docks in Barnegat Light.

http://app.com/article/20090326/NEWS...wLPQHacw0jI%3D
http://c7.zedo.com/img/bh.gif?n=162&...05&s=1&l=1&t=i http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-...tureAndSociety