A US Coast Guard air crew from Cape Cod evacuated an injured man from a fishing vessel 70 miles east of Gloucester yesterday, after the man experienced swelling from a two-day-old head injury. The Coast Guard responded after the fishing vessel Sammy Jo sent a distress call at approximately 2 p.m. After consulting with the flight surgeon at the Air Station in Cape Cod, the unidentified 55-year-old male crewmember was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.
Read this story from The Boston Globe.
An unidentified crewman aboard the Gloucester-based fishing boat Grace Marie had to be airlifted from the vessel 10 miles out to sea by Coast Guard helicopter after being seriously injured in an on-board accident.
According to reports from the Coast Guard, the fishing vessel was 10 miles north of Provincetown when Coast Guard Sector Boston watchstanders received a report from the Grace Marie captain that a 52-year-old male had sustained an arm injury.
The incident occurred at approximately 11 o'clock last Thursday night, according to the Coast Guard.
Coast Guard officials did not provide the name of the crewman. The regular captain of the Grace Marie, a 65-foot fishing boat, is Riverdale resident Sebastian Noto.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.
BIDDEFORD, Maine—Three fishermen have been brought to safety after their 42-foot boat ran aground and began taking on water off the southern Maine coast.
Coast Guard Lt. Nick Barrow said the Portland-based Misty Dawn II sent out a Mayday call at about 1 p.m. Monday reporting it was aground on Wood Island Ledge off Biddeford.
Barrow said the three fishermen were rescued by the Scarborough marine rescue team, which brought them to another fishing vessel in the area. Nobody was hurt.
Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.
A commercial fishing boat from Massachusetts broke down in rough seas south of Shinnecock Inlet on Monday and is being towed toward Rhode Island by the U.S. Coast Guard, according to a Coast Guard release.
The 84-foot fishing boat Neskone was harvesting sea scallops 50-miles offshore when it encountered mechanical problems. Another fishing boat attempted to help the Neskone overnight but was unable to because of rough seas, estimated at 15 feet by the Coast Guard.
Read the complete story from The Press News Group.
At 5:40 a.m. on March 24, 2009, a geostationary satellite 22,236 miles above sea level wakes up. Its antennae have picked up a maritime distress signal from an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.
About the size of a large flashlight, an EPIRB is a required piece of equipment on most commercial fishing vessels. When submerged — that is, when a ship begins to sink — the device automatically releases from a bracket attached to the outside of a ship’s cabin or wheelhouse and floats to the surface.
Normally, the local user terminal attaches the EPIRB registration information to the electronic message it sends to the mission-control computer, and when the SARSAT computer receives the emergency data, it notifies a watch-stander — the officer in charge — at a rescue coordination center.
In the case of the Lady Mary, that’s the Fifth Coast Guard District’s headquarters, or Atlantic Area command center. But there’s a problem: The local user terminal can’t match the signal coming from the Lady Mary’s EPIRB with one of the more than half-million registered beacons in SARSAT’s database. Without a matching registration, there is no vessel name, and without a vessel name, the mission-control computer takes the local terminal’s information and "tables" it. The Lady Mary’s EPRIB also did not have a GPS, which was not mandatory.
Read the complete installment of this series from New Jersey On-Line.
In the chilly, early morning hours of March 24, 2009, six of seven crewman were killed when the red-hulled scalloper, the Lady Mary, sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. The mystery of what sank her, which continues to haunt the maritime world, has just begun.
This story is about a tragedy no one lived to tell — except Jose Arias, the only crewman plucked from the ocean alive, but who was asleep below decks when the sea suddenly began to swallow the boat. But from the tormented memories of its sole survivor, hundreds of pages of Coast Guard documents, the analyses of more than a dozen marine experts and the Lady Mary’s own ghostly remains, a picture has slowly emerged.
No single event doomed the six fishermen, rather a cascade of circumstances set in motion years earlier by a slip in penmanship on a vessel safety form, compounded by a clerical error. Darkness, deteriorating weather, a tired crew and an open hatch contributed to the vessel’s vulnerability. Then, a floating behemoth 10 times the size of the little scalloper came plowing through the fishing ground at nearly full throttle.
Read the complete story from New Jersey On-Line.
The Gloucester-based, off-shore fishing boat Michael & Kristen, stranded an estimated 145 miles off the coast of Chatham, is set to arrive back on shore sometime late tomorrow after being towed to safety throughout the night and into tomorrow by a Coast Guard cutter, USCG officials say.
Coast Guard spokeswoman Connie Terrell said the overnight towing would likely be “very slow” due to inclement weather on the seas. She said that, as of 5 p.m., it was unclear to which port the Michael & Kristen was being towed.
All five people aboard the Michael & Kristen, however, are safe, Terrell said. The boat was disabled due to a problem with its driveshaft, Terrell said this afternoon.
According to the Coast Guard, the 77-foot Michael & Kristen notified the agency at 4:30 p.m. on Monday that it was “disabled” and needed assistance. A 270-foot medium endurance cutter, The Legare, was dispatched Monday and reached the Michael & Kristen this morning.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.
After years of effort, legislation beefing up fishing vessel safety nationwide is on President Barack Obama's desk, according to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. John Kerry, both D-Mass.
The long road to passing the legislation through Congress last week came through New Bedford in 2007, when Frank sponsored a public forum on vessel safety.
That effort followed on the heels of a failed attempt in 2006 to put fishing vessel safety improvements in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs fisheries management. The Republican majority at the time decided that the two issues weren't closely enough related to belong in the same bill.
The new legislation steps up the standards for new or altered boats, requires documented safety drills and inspections, and adds fishing safety research to the Coast Guard's annual research and development efforts.
The bill does contain one omission, Frank noted: It does not require single-hulled fuel barges traversing Buzzards Bay to take on a specially qualified pilot. That requirement, imposed by Massachusetts after the 1993 Bouchard oil spill, was nullified by the successful lawsuit filed by the Coast Guard, claiming the state had overreached its jurisdiction.
Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.
Scallop landings in Virginia last year accounted for $63 million, by far the state's most valuable commercial fishery. Deckhands, who spend hours shucking in the blistering sun, can earn more than $1,000 a day.
The big paycheck comes with tremendous risk. According to a new report, the Atlantic scallop fleet has the second highest mortality rate among U.S. fisheries — more dangerous than the Alaska crab fishery featured on the television show, "Deadliest Catch."
"Anything can happen out there," said Bill Mullis, owner of B&C Seafood Inc., one of five scallop fleets in Hampton Roads.
The Atlantic coast is home to the world's largest wild scallop fishing grounds, which stretch from Newfoundland, Canada, to North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Read the complete story from The Daily Press.
Nothing will bring back Capt. Matteo Russo and his father-in-law, John Orlando. But the U.S. Coast Guard owes their family members a far more comprehensive answer than the one just released into why Russo's fishing boat, the Patriot, capsized and sank in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, 2009.
The Coast Guard, in a 50-plus page report released last Friday after an 18-month investigation, concluded that the sinking was most likely caused by a combination of mechanical failures, design flaws and possible human error.
Significantly, that report aims to dismiss what the Coast Guard had originally said might have been the cause of what was obviously a sudden sinking — a possible accident involving the cable of a tug towing a barge that was in the same area of Middle Bank where the two men were fishing.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.