BOSCO: A Foot, a Line, and Ten Minutes That Weren't Enough

Off Chemoulin, 10 December 2012 — 09:30

BOSCO, a small wooden potting boat working out of Pornichet, had two crew and a friend of the skipper aboard as a passenger, hauling and resetting fifteen strings of crevette pots — 30 pots to a string. It was routine, familiar work: the skipper at the hauler and helm, his deckhand working a cramped space of barely a square metre at the stern, taking each pot as it came aboard, emptying it, and stacking it ready to reset. Neither man was wearing a lifejacket — not unusual for this kind of close-in pot work, and not something the crew treated as an active decision each time.

What Happened

As one string was being paid back out, the deckhand's left foot became caught in the line connecting the pots to the ground rope — BEAmer's investigation couldn't determine exactly how. He went into the water, calling out. The passenger alerted the skipper immediately; the skipper stopped the boat, put her astern, and brought her close alongside his crewman, who was swimming while held fast by the foot. He threw a ring buoy first, then cut the line free, then pulled the deckhand up until he could get an arm and his head through the buoy. What followed was a genuine, sustained fight: for roughly ten minutes, the skipper tried to haul his crewman aboard against the current, the drag of the gear still trailing, and the deadweight of sodden oilskins and flooded boots — and couldn't. Exhausted, he had to let go, tried a second approach, and finally succeeded in lifting him aboard using a rope passed under his arms and the boat's own pot hauler. His crewman was unconscious by the time he reached the deck. CPR began immediately; a doctor was brought out by lifeboat within the hour. He didn't survive.

What the Investigation Found

BEAmer's own conclusion doesn't look for blame in the individual actions that day — it looks at the work itself. Pot fishing from a boat this size, on a stern working area this cramped, with lines and strops stored loose on deck rather than in bins or racks because there simply isn't room, is inherently difficult to make safe by layout alone. The deckhand had joined the boat only weeks earlier, trained by the man he replaced after 15 years aboard — an experienced handover, not a novice crew.