After Victor Blanco disappeared at sea, his wife turned their dining room into a shrine. She didn’t go to her job at a machine shop. Instead, she placed a framed picture of Victor on a table in their two-story home in Providence’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. She lit a candle next to a glass of holy water. At the base of her husband’s photograph, she placed two small wooden figures, a fisherman and a boat.
“Always there is the fear that something can happen,” says Alba Chavez-Blanco, her dark eyes wet with grief.
As a young man in El Salvador, Victor had worked on shrimp boats in the waters off Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Alba lived nearby, with six siblings, in a house on a hill overlooking the sea.
The two fell in love, came to America in 1993, raised three daughters and bought a house on a crowded street in Providence.
After doing odd jobs, and fishing out of New Bedford, Mass., Victor got work aboard the Barbara Ann, one of the biggest lobster boats in Point Judith. The 86-foot boat, owned by Robert and Roy Campanale, had never lost a man, and the two brothers over the years had landed millions of dollars in lobsters, helping establish Point Judith as a key New England port.
But on the evening of May 15, the Barbara Ann encountered a strong wind and 10-foot-high waves. Blanco, working in the stern, was hit by a lobster trap and fell overboard 95 miles south of Montauk, N.Y.
A crewman threw Victor a life ring, but he couldn’t grab it and slipped beneath the water. Like most fishermen, he wasn’t wearing a life jacket or survival suit. After a day of searching, the Barbara Ann, a sister ship and a Coast Guard helicopter and jet failed to find the 37-year-old fisherman.
The day the Barbara Ann returned to Point Judith without their father, Blanco’s three daughters — Kenia, 11, Maria, 14, and Zuleyma, 17 — climbed aboard to see their father’s other home for a last time.
Alba could not.
SINCE JANUARY, seven New England fishermen have been killed at sea, despite efforts by Congress and the U.S. Coast Guard to make the job safer.
Beset by rough seas, equipment failure and pilot error, 14 boats capsized or sank during the first nine months of this year, according to Coast Guard officials. There were more than 60 injuries, fires, floodings and other mishaps.Those killed worked on boats with hopeful names.
On Jan. 26, the New Bedford dragger Lady of Grace sank in Nantucket Sound, about 12 miles off Hyannis. State police divers recovered the bodies of two of the four crewmen. They found the 50-year-old captain, Antonio Barroqueiro, in the wheelhouse under 54 feet of water.
Six days later, a New Hampshire crewman and a Massachusetts captain sent a distress signal from the Lady Luck, a 52-foot groundfishing boat. Coast Guard crews later spotted wood debris and the boat’s beacon floating off the shoals of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. No bodies were found.
Prompted by a surge of deaths in the late 1990s, a Coast Guard task force recommended new ways to improve the safety of commercial fishing. Last year, more Northeast captains volunteered for inspections than in any other region. Life rafts, flares, homing beacons and survival suits are now required by federal law on most boats, but fishermen aren’t required to use them.
But safety training remains voluntary on state-registered boats and, unlike charter boat owners, commercial fishing captains do not need a license to pilot a boat.According to the U.S. Labor Department, commercial fishing last year was more dangerous than any other occupation, including flying a plane, logging, fighting fires or stringing electric power lines.
About 142 of every 100,000 fishermen and women are killed on the job, a fatality rate 36 times higher than the national average.
“By its very nature it’s a dangerous job,” says Thomas Bond, a Boston-based lawyer who specializes in maritime law. “You have people working on a surface that’s never static” on a boat jammed with heavy equipment. “You’re always being thrown about.”
According to Coast Guard statistics, most fishermen killed on the job drown or die from hypothermia after a boat capsizes or sinks, or after they fall overboard.
Boats flip or sink for various reasons, including storms, rough seas, flooding, fire, mechanical problems, poor maintenance or navigational error. On cold days icy masts can change a boat’s center of gravity, making it easier to flip.
Richard Winter, who stopped fishing four years ago after his health worsened, was sleeping on the Point Judith-based Princess when a wave flipped it on its side near Block Island.
“I fell out of my bunk under water,” says Winter, who could see nothing in the watery gloom. Luckily, the ship righted before he drowned.
“No matter how often you prepare, you panic in those situations,” says Winter, who lost a father, an uncle and a friend to the sea.
Even in good weather, fishermen scramble on decks slick with water, ice and fish oil. They squat in pens filled with flopping fish and toss out refuse with a sharp pick. They operate power winches and handle knives and duck nets and ropes and chains, which can grab a man by the arm or leg and snatch him overboard.
And once the fishing starts, crews get little sleep. They grab meals and naps between landings.
“You don’t get a little bit hurt out here,” says 55-year-old Craig Huntley, who lost a friend when a broken pulley smashed his skull.
To seal small wounds, Huntley keeps a tube of Super Glue aboard his boat, the Miss Trudy. But small wounds aren’t the problem, he says. “When you get hurt on a boat, a Band-Aid won’t help.”
LAWMAKERS AND safety experts are pushing for more training programs and tougher regulations.
In Maine, new lobstermen must complete a safety course. State officials also want to upgrade safety laws in local waters. “This is done by fishermen and safety experts working together,” says Col. Joseph Fessenden, with Maine’s Marine Patrol.
In New Bedford, officials responded to the loss of the Northern Edge in 2004 by sponsoring more safety programs.
The boat, with an experienced captain and crew, ran into a bad storm while searching for scallops off Nantucket. When a dredge got caught on the sea floor, the vessel suddenly tipped over and 10-foot-high waves crashed over the deck. Five men drowned.
Afterward, the Coast Guard, the City of New Bedford and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth joined to offer more workshops, including one this month. “It gives fishermen a chance to get into life rafts, light flares, put on survival suits and deal with simulated leaks,” says Kevin Cole, a Coast Guard safety coordinator for Southeastern New England.
Before the 2004 accident, few fishermen attended such courses. But since then, more than 1,600 have participated, says Ted R. Harrington, another fishing vessel safety coordinator for the Coast Guard.
In Point Judith, the Point Club last year offered safety equipment to its members at a deep discount. The club, one of largest fishing vessel mutual insurance clubs on the East Coast, got help from local retailers, who sold some of the equipment at cost. The club relied on a fundraiser, and other money, to further reduce the cost of the floats, defibrillators and collision-warning systems. Members also have their boats inspected annually.
Still, making safety a top concern isn’t easy, experts acknowledge. Fishermen live with scars, bad backs and even missing fingers. They accept their lot with salty stoicism.
“We have to get rid of this ‘It won’t happen to me’ attitude,” says Fred Mattera, a Point Judith fisherman and safety trainer. “Safety has to become commonplace. Twenty years ago, we didn’t wear seat belts either.”
Mattera keeps about $10,000 worth of safety equipment — some of it mandatory, some of it optional — aboard his 84-foot freezer trawler, the Travis & Natalie. A $5,000 six-man life raft includes a canopy, flares, water, food, and a first aid kit among its provisions.
Also onboard are life jackets, life rings, fire extinguishers, a flood kit and an Emergency Positioning Indicating Radio Beacon — a so-called “black box” that transmits a signal to a satellite, which bounces it back to a station on land. “When this goes off,” says Mattera, “they know it’s from the Travis & Natalie. This is the thing that’s going to bring the cavalry to you.”
Mattera also owns six survival suits, which keep crew members warm and afloat if they’re forced into the sea.
When a boat takes on too much water, fishermen have 3 to 5 minutes before it sinks. That’s why they must practice donning survival suits, says Mattera. The ideal suit-up time? Sixty seconds.
Mattera knows firsthand how quickly cold water can disable someone. On a cold February day in 1997, he fell into the water at Point Judith. His heart rate and blood pressure spiked and the freezing water hit him like a fist.
“Cold water shocks the body,” he says. “You start gasping and your heart starts to shut down. I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t scream.”
Even as officials try to make the job safer for fishermen, other forces are working against them.
Facing weak profits and declining catches, many captains are cutting back on maintenance and equipment. Some are waiting longer to haul out boats that need sandblasting, painting and repairs.
That’s a bad idea, says Bond, whose firm, The Kaplan Group, is representing the Blanco family. “When your boat and equipment are exposed to the elements — to wind and salt and sand — they deteriorate a lot faster.”
Aging fleets are another problem. At Point Judith, the average age of a boat is around 30 years. According to the Coast Guard, older boats are more likely to sink. “After 25 or 30 years, you should be building a new boat,” says Mattera.
Because profits are often shared, more boats are fishing with smaller crews. Captains are spending more time on deck and less time steering the boat. “People are working when they’re tired, and they’re cramming a lot of fishing into a few days,” says Bond. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Also, the establishment of quotas for various species forces fishermen to go out in bad weather and to work around the clock to guarantee they won’t lose out if the predetermined catch limit is reached quickly. “There’s this race for fish and it’s very unsafe,” says Mattera. Other laws tempt fishermen to stay out, even in bad weather, to maximize their catches. If they have exceeded their daily quotas, they have two options: dump the excess overboard and go home, or stay out another day. If they come in early with too much fish, they’re fined.
“It’s legislative death,” says David Preble, a member of the New England Fishery Management Council. “And it’s unforgivable.”
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., whose district includes New Bedford, is seeking $3 million for more safety training and research.. Last year, he convinced federal regulators to make safety their top priority as they write new rules for conserving fish. “The jury is still out” if the effort will make a difference, says Peter Kovar, a spokesman for Frank. With seven deaths in New England this year, the highest since 2005, fishermen are gearing up for the important winter season. October and December are two of the most dangerous months at sea.
SOMETIMES IT’S HARD to anticipate what can go wrong.
Six years ago, Leo Croteau was working in the fish hold of the Katrina Lee, a Point Judith dragger fishing near Nantucket.
Croteau, a gaunt man with the words Harley and Davidson tattooed on his arms, complained about “slimy” fish in the hold. At 4:30 p.m., about 125 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Croteau suddenly felt sick. “I was getting dizzy. I felt like I was having a heart attack,” he says.
He pitched face first into the ice. Crewman Greg Verdon called out but Croteau didn’t answer.
Alarmed, Verdon and Captain James Byrne went down to rescue Croteau. But before they could do so, Byrne was overcome and collapsed. Deck hand Steven Follett helped Verdon pull Croteau onto the deck and returned to help Byrne.
Croteau, who lost feelings in his legs and arms, still remembers looking down and seeing Byrne’s and Follett’s eyes go white and foam bubble from their mouths.
Verdon sent a distress signal that was answered by two nearby boats, the Northern Lynn and Mattera’s boat, the Travis & Natalie. Crew members clambered down into the hold and pulled out Follett and Byrne. Croteau, Byrne and Follett were flown by a Coast Guard helicopter to Cape Cod Hospital.
Coast Guard officials later said the men were overcome by the noxious fumes of hydrogen sulfide created by fish that had gone bad.
Follett, of South Kingstown, died in the hospital. The 22-year-old fisherman had considered going to college, but decided to follow the family tradition. His father, two uncles and a grandfather were all fishermen.
Byrne came out of a coma and spent weeks in rehabilitation. He quit fishing. He’s now studying architecture and construction management at the New England Institute of Technology. Croteau, who could not remember his phone number after the accident, returned to fishing. But last winter he quit, and started painting houses. He made nearly $10,000 in just a few months.
Follett was cremated and his ashes thrown into the sea.
Day One
Four days aboard the Miss Trudy with Captain Craig Huntley and his crew, as they travel more than 200 miles from Point Judith to trawl for fish in Munson Canyon.
Today
Commercial fishing last year was the most dangerous occupation in the United States. Since January, seven New England fishermen have lost their lives.
Day Three
Rhode Island lobstermen are in court fighting a state regulation that they contend restricts their ability to make a living from the sea.
Day Four
How fishermen overfished the ocean, and how the government, through complex and ever-changing regulations, alternately helped and hindered them.
Day Five
At a time when others are bailing out of the industry, seeing no future in it, Newport’s Brent Bowen hopes to spend his life as a fisherman.
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