High level alarm could have saved lives of three fishermen

The last call to come from fishing trawler FV Jubilee came from its skipper.

‘‘[We’re] getting off and getting in the liferaft now’’, Paul Russell Bennett said over the radio. None of the men made it.

Bennett, 35, of Motueka, Terry Donald Booth, 55, of the Nelson area, and Jared Reese Husband, 47, of Timaru, died on the Ocean Fisheries trawler when it sank off the Canterbury coast on October 18, 2015.

A Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) report, published on Thursday, found a running hose may have led to their deaths and they could have been saved if warned. As the boat went down, they gathered in the wheel- Jared Reese Husband house, where the lifejackets were stored. With no clear escape route to the open deck, they perished there together.

The fishermen set out on the vessel two days before the sinking. They sailed from Lyttelton and headed to fishing grounds to the southwest of Banks Peninsula.

Once there, the Jubilee joined another Ocean Fisheries Limited vessel, the Legacy. The two groups fished close to each other throughout the day.

At one point Bennett contacted the Legacy skipper and told him that, as the fishing was not good, he would head towards the coast to catch flatfish overnight.

At 1.30am, the Jubilee skipper called again to say he had changed his mind and was going to ‘‘park up for the night’’.

The next call came at 4.19am, from someone on the Jubilee using the vessel’s mobile phone. The call was not answered.

A minute later the Jubilee skipper issued a distress call on the radio. Bennett said the vessel was taking on water and sinking.

The bodies of all three men were found in the wheelhouse. The skipper and one crew member were scantily clothed, as though they had been asleep. Neither wore footwear. The third crew member was fully clothed.

The report said it was possible the third crew member was the designated watchkeeper.

TAIC found the most likely cause of the sinking was a flood in the fish hold.

It was possible the water came from a deck wash hose left running through an open hatch.

The absence of a bilge high-level fish hold alarm and the absence of an indicator in the wheelhouse alerting the crew when the bilge pump was running were ‘‘missing checks in the system’’.

Those would have alerted the fishermen and, possibly, saved their lives, TAIC found. The report said it was not known when, or for how long, the crew were aware of what was happening.

Whatever went wrong happened quickly.

‘‘The men were trapped inside the wheelhouse with the sliding door leading to the main deck shut.

‘‘One panel that closed off the compartment where the lifejackets were stowed was dislodged, possibly indicative of the crew attempting to don lifejackets before abandoning the vessel.’’ None of the men were wearing lifejackets when they were found.

TAIC criticised the design of the wheelhouse, saying it did not offer enough of an opportunity to escape.

‘‘It is concerning that the wheelhouse, where the crew were found, where they were most likely to gather in an emergency, and where the lifejackets were stowed, had no escape route directly to the open deck.’’ Bennett’s father, Graeme Bennett, was yet to read the report fully, but said he had no anger towards Ocean Fisheries. He spent several months on the vessel fishing with his son and would not hesitate to get on it again.

‘‘I would have had no qualms sailing on that boat,’’ he said.

‘‘Yeah I’m sad and at times a little bit angry that my son’s never coming home again but I certainly don’t have any ill will towards any person, people or company – it’s just part of an emotional journey.’’

One issue that did anger Bennett was that the vessel was never recovered.

‘‘I think of all three of them with great fondness. They were competent at their jobs, they weren’t cowboys.’’

Ocean Fisheries chief executive Andrew Stark would not comment on the report while there were ‘‘further investigations’’.

He would not say if other boats had the same pump, but said it was a ‘‘relief’’ to have the report after a trying 18 months.

‘‘It’s been hard on all of us, especially the families, and it’s difficult to have it all come up again. We’ve obviously been involved in the investigation so we’re just thankful it’s come out and we can get to the end of this.’’