Grim task to recover bodies
Sunken vessel located
POLICE divers will today seek to enter the sunken vessel Dianne, where the bodies of six fishermen, including Gold Coast father Chris Sammut, are feared to be entombed.
Families were briefed about the discovery of the missing boat yesterday afternoon at the tail end of the fourth day of searching.
The “slug boat”, converted from a trawler for sea cucumber fishing, was found in about 30m of water, two to three nautical miles off Round Hill Headland and the Town of 1770.
Divers confirmed it was the missing boat. Water police guarded the site overnight, ahead of an expected grim day today when police divers will attempt to enter the boat to search for, and possibly retrieve, the men’s bodies.
“A full recovery operation will commence tomorrow morning,” police said yesterday.
Torrid weather has hampered search efforts since the alarm was raised on Tuesday morning that the boat had gone down in rough seas the previous evening.
But yesterday conditions began to improve, allowing searchers to use sonar equipment to scan the seabed.
Seven police divers from Brisbane and two from NSW were sent into the search area yesterday on board the police vessel Conroy, one of two vessels using sonar throughout the day.
Police had been confident they would discover the sunken boat, based in part on descriptions from the sole known survivor, Ruben McDornan, and information from the vessel’s tracking system.
On the day the vessel sank it had set off from Gladstone for a planned fortnight-long stint harvesting sea cucumbers, or beche-de-mer, around the Capricorn and Bunker group of islands and reefs, north of 1770.
The men on board were in their prime: mates who were living their dream on the water doing one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.
Skipper Ben Leahy, 45, was joined by crew members Mr Sammut, 34, Adam Hoffman, 30, Eli Tonks, 39, Adam Bidner, 33, Zach Feeney, 28, and Mr McDornan, 32.
Survivor Mr McDornan owes his life to pure chance after forcing open a door enough to squeeze out of the upturned boat.
In a double miracle, he then survived a night drifting in rolling waves without a life jacket, before being rescued by a passing catamaran.