Saturday, February 23, 2013

Nova Scotia fishing tragedy

The top news here this week has been the Miss Ally sinking. A week ago the fishing vessel was lost and 5 young fisherman on board perished.

Since then I can say I'm shocked but not surprised by the case from the government and the media. Luckily at the time of this writing, by some miracle, the overturned ship has again been found. Incredibly it was found 5 days ago by the coast guard, then they somehow managed to lose track of it, leaving it to sink!

That makes no sense. If the idea was to find survivors / bodies then when they found the capsized vessel originally, what would the coast guard think to do?

  • how about mosey up to the fishing boat and put a specialist diver in the water to check for bodies? after all, they were looking for bodies so why didn't it cross anyone's mind to check in the vessel for bodies
  • how about attach a line to the boat. if they can't turn it upright in place then fine, but if it's sitting in the water then surely it could be towed to port. or at least stay with it and keep track of where it is
remarkably, incredibly, the coast guard just voluntarily sailed away Tuesday, leaving the capsized vessel with bodies possibly aboard (they apparently didn't bother to check) to sink or whatever. losing its location.

it fell to the fishermen from the village to launch their own mission to locate and recover the Miss Ally to embarrass the coast guard / navy to act to only now attempt to re-locate and recover the vessel. shame on them both. what are we paying these people all of these millions a dollars a year for?

the media coverage has also been pretty bad. in the first hours it was reported that a US coast guard plane had spotted a life raft and a flare. since then the local media has completely dropped the ball. no follow up with the US coast guard. no follow up as to what happened to the life raft and where it might be now, or if there may have been survivors or bodies on it.

no follow up about the flare. was there a flare? it is possible for flares to be launched automatically without human intervention? also the media failed to put any pressure on the coast guard to stay with the capsized vessel once it was found, and was very passive in the reporting of the decision of the coast guard to just sail away without bringing the Miss Ally back or even bothering to check the vessel for bodies

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