3 Fishermen Die After Boat Sinks

Three Ventura County men were found dead after spending up to six hours in the Pacific Ocean when their Ventura-based commercial fishing boat sank off San Nicolas Island early Thursday.

Crew members of the Lindy Jane were fishing for rockfish seven miles west of the island when the boat began to take on water. At 3:30 a.m., crew member Tam Duong, 29, of Oxnard put out a distress call via marine radio that was picked up by the Coast Guard in Long Beach, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Dan Tremper. Twenty minutes later, as the boat was about to sink into the 3,000-foot depths, Duong sent his last call: The crew members had put on life jackets and were about to go into the water.

The Coast Guard launched a helicopter from San Diego about 3:45 a.m., and another from Los Angeles International Airport at 4:05 a.m. Both choppers arrived at the scene, 80 miles southwest of San Pedro, about 4:35 a.m.

However, they were unable to find the men in foggy and dark conditions.

Thirty minutes into the search, the chopper from Los Angeles made an emergency landing on the island when a warning light went on, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Ed Greiner. What turned out to be a malfunctioning warning light delayed the crew for about two hours.

That helicopter then rejoined the search, but the crew did not spot the fishermen until about 9:35 a.m., 20 miles west of the island. All three were floating face-down.

“There were no signs of life,” Greiner said.

Two of the men wore life jackets over casual clothing. The third was partly clad in a survival suit, and was not wearing a life jacket, he said.

They were pronounced dead about noon at Torrance Memorial Medical Center.

The victims were identified by boat owner Moui “Timmy” Duong, 36, of Los Angeles, as his brother Tam, and Vietnamese nationals San Nguyen and Tan Le. He did not know the ages of the other crew members.

“I feel really bad about this,” Timmy Duong said Thursday afternoon. He, his father, Nam Duong of Oxnard, and his brother’s girlfriend, 21-year-old Thu Hoang, gathered at Timmy Duong’s house in Los Angeles.

This was the first trip of the month for the Lindy Jane. Timmy Duong said the crew had set sail at 4 p.m. Tuesday from Ventura Harbor.

Last week, the boat underwent transmission repairs and the drive shaft was replaced.

“The area of the drive shaft where the water could get in was not leaking. If it did leak right there, the leak should have been slow. It would have been [more than] 20 minutes before the boat was all the way down in the water,” Timmy Duong said.

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He thinks the boat, which he valued at $10,000, likely went down after striking rocks, and the crew probably drifted while rescuers conducted their search.

“That’s what I think in my mind, that they hit some rocks about six miles off the shore,” he said.

Officials said the boat’s transponder sent out a signal intended to aid in the search. But soon after, the signal died. Hours later, the signal began again.

“I don’t know why it took hours for them to get there. The signal was there and the Coast Guard should have known exactly where it was,” said Timmy Duong.

However, Coast Guard officials said the malfunction hampered the search.

“The hours that it was not signaling is when most of the searching took place,” Greiner said.

Dr. Franklin Pratt, co-director of the Torrance Memorial Medical Center Emergency Medical Unit, said the water temperature, estimated to be in the 50s, and the time in the water led to the deaths.

“All three had evidence of significant drowning and hypothermia,” Pratt said. Survival in the conditions the men faced “is a couple of hours, or usually less,” he said.

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It is not likely that the malfunctioning light aboard the helicopter contributed to the deaths by slowing the search, Pratt said.

“Based on what we saw, unless someone had been there, they were really, really at almost no chance” of survival, Pratt said.

Timmy Duong had few details about Nguyen and Len. Neither had family members close by, he said. The pair had lived on the boat for the last couple of months, he said.

Duong, his five brothers and parents came to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1979. Like their father, he and his brother wanted to make a living as commercial fishermen.

“We tried to do the business, just like my father before,” Timmy Duong said Thursday. “My father was a fisherman. We try to make a living like him. We bought the boat and tried to make a living. But the last couple of years, it’s been real hard.”

Tam Duong began fishing after high school and had fished full time since 1990, Timmy Duong said. Earlier in the day, Thu Hoang said information about Tam’s whereabouts, his condition and the condition of the boat was slow in coming from authorities.

“All they did was call me after 6 this morning and say they can’t find the boat, they cannot see nothing,” she said. “When I hear there was trouble, I call my brother, called all the people in the family, and we called friends in the ocean who were fishing.”

None of the other vessels in the vicinity had seen the crew or the wreckage, she said.

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The National Marine Fisheries Service research vessel, David Starr Jordan, was conducting tests with lasers to determine fish school sizes off San Nicolas Island and aided in the search. When news of the crew’s fate was received on board, the crew was shaken, said spokeswoman Susan Smith.

“We have participated in rescues at sea before,” she said. “When you’re out on the ship, you really feel it.”

It didn’t take long for the news to reach Ventura Harbor.

Ann Hall, who collects rental fees at Ventura Harbor Village Marina where the Lindy Jane had docked for the past year, said she waited all day for good news.

“I had hoped throughout the day that they would be found alive,” Hall said. When the bad news came about 2 p.m., she grieved for the men, and thought of her own family.

“My husband used to be a commercial fisherman,” she said. “I’m glad he stays on land now.”