BOSTON — The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday found debris and a body after launching a search for a fishing vessel in distress off Massachusetts.
The search began after the Coast Guard said it received an emergency alert from the 72-foot fishing vessel Lily Jean early Friday located about 25 miles off Cape Ann. It is unclear how many people were on the vessel, a ground fishboat that fished for cod, haddock and pollock.
Deep-sea fishing in New England can always be hazardous, but it can be especially dangerous in the winter because of high waves, frigid temperatures and unpredictable weather. Commercial fishing is often cited as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
The boat, its captain, Gus Sanfilippo and his crew were featured in a 2012 episode of the History Channel show “Nor’Easter Men.” Sanfilippo is described as a fifth-generation commercial fisherman, fishing out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the Georges Bank. The crew is shown working in dangerous weather conditions for hours on end, spending as many as 10 days at sea on one trip fishing for haddock, lobster and flounder.
The Coast Guard said it tried unsuccessfully to contact the vessel and then launched a search that included an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew, a small boat crew and the Coast Guard Cutter Thunder Bay.
They found a debris field and recovered one person from the water who was unresponsive. They also found an empty life raft.
At the time of the emergency alert, the National Weather Service said wind speeds out at sea were around 27 mph (24 knots) with waves around four feet high. It was 12 degrees (-11 Celsius) with water temperatures about 39 degrees (4 degrees Celsius.)
Gloucester Council President Tony Gross, a retired fisherman, called it a “huge tragedy for this community.”
“The families are just devastated at this point,” Gross said. “They are half full of hope and half full of dread, I would imagine.”
Gross described conditions on the water as “fishable” but that it wouldn’t take much for ice to build up on the vessel. “That is what people are thinking right now, that there was ice buildup and that made the boat unstable,” he said.
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