GLOUCESTER, Mass. (March 25, 2016) — The concept first began to crystallize in Angela Sanfilippo’s mind about four years ago, when the president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association realized she needed to start putting some things down on paper.
Sanfilippo, both in her roles with fishing-based community groups and her own experience as a wife, daughter and sister of fishermen, had helped develop a series of protocols to help fishermen avoid calamities on the water and help the Gloucester fishing community deal with fishing tragedies when they occur.
“I just thought that we should start putting these things in writing because we’re not going to be around forever,” Sanfilippo said.
Thus was born the idea that burst into reality Thursday when the Fishing Partnership Support Services unveiled its RESCUES manual in an event at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Station Gloucester.
The title of the manual, assembled with assistance from staffers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sea Grant College program and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an acronym for “Responding to Emergencies at Sea and to Communities Under Extreme Stress.”