Making Sense of Vietnamese Fishermen’s Tragic Drownings

Beer cans and cigarettes sit on a dockside step near an empty slip in Ventura Harbor, a memorial to three Vietnamese fishermen who drowned when their 32-foot boat sank in the Pacific Ocean.

A friend and former business associate explains to onlookers that the two empty cans of Budweiser placed next to Slip 88 are very meaningful. To the mourner who left the cans--probably an Asian--the makeshift shrine is as symbolic a gesture as the placing of a flower upon a grave by a Westerner, said Tommy Eng of Ventura.

The display is consistent with a tradition of setting out food, paper money and other objects of necessity and comfort for the dead. “Whatever they favored when they were living, [mourners] put out for them after they died,” said Eng, who had set up markets for the fishermen who drowned.

To the white fishermen who share space at E dock in the Ventura Harbor Village Marina, the cans seem a curious way to remember Oxnard resident Tam Duong, 29, San Nguyen, 32, of Pomona and Tan Le, 34, whose residence is not known. The men died April 17 when their Ventura-based boat, Lindy Jane, sank seven miles off San Nicolas Island.

The boat remains on the ocean floor under more than 300 feet of water.

Other fishermen and researchers who study the insular community of Vietnamese fishermen say some deaths are inevitable.

Many Vietnamese fishermen, they say, are struggling to support families and are forced to take huge risks to bring in the catch.

“The whites value life more than money. But the Vietnamese had so much suffering during the war that they don’t look at it the same,” Eng said.

The 66-year-old Chinese-born businessman said that for many, their concern is not when they will die, but if they will bring home a paycheck at the end of the day.

“Asians are human beings. We all value our life. But under some circumstances, we value it a little different,” Eng said.

Cho Le, a former fisherman who grew up in the same Vietnamese village as Nguyen, said many of his countrymen, including Nguyen, balk at modern safety devices and rely on the old ways--reading cloud patterns and wind and sea conditions without high-tech equipment.

“San is very courageous. He knows the problems but he’s never scared. He thinks he can handle anything, even no safety. I said he’s crazy,” Le said.

Boats in Poor Shape

Walk along the commercial boat docks in Ventura and you see Vietnamese-owned boats that are little more than steel- and wooden-hulled pleasure crafts with a bridge added here, a bait tank there.

“The condition of their boats? You can see that they’re just flying by the seat of their pants,” said state Fish and Game Warden John Castro. In nine years of enforcing fishing regulations in Ventura County, Castro has made numerous boardings of local Vietnamese-owned boats.

There are barely 100 Vietnamese-owned and -operated vessels from Dana Point to Morro Bay, said Francis McClain, commercial fishing examiner for the Coast Guard. The majority are less than 36 feet long, which exempts them from inspection for seaworthiness. Federal law does require inspections to ensure proper safety equipment.

The Lindy Jane’s hook-and-line fishing trips were made within 12 miles of land, so the boat was not required to have a life raft, said McClain, who has 19 years of experience inspecting commercial and pleasure craft.

When the Coast Guard does make a safety inspection, each case of noncompliance can cost the captain or owner as much as $5,000. The fine is determined through an administrative hearing.

While he didn’t have specific numbers, McClain said, “The Vietnamese fleet probably has a higher percentage of noncompliance in the case of safety equipment than non-Vietnamese-owned vessels.”

The reasons why have a lot to do with culture and religion.

“Their beliefs in life and death are much different than ours because of religious beliefs. The way they are raised and look at life in general is a very different perspective,” McClain said.

“You can make all the regulations you want and throw all the safety equipment into the mix. But until you change the individual’s attitude about safety, it doesn’t do any good. Most of these guys don’t even know how to use the safety equipment they got,” McClain said.

For five years, McClain has been in charge of a courtesy dockside education and inspection program open to all boat operators. The program is intended to get everybody to comply with safety regulations. Completion of the course earns the operator a safety sticker good for two years.

He would like to see more Vietnamese take part.

“As much as I respect their beliefs, I want to make sure they have something to hold on to when they step off that dock,” he said.

Bernd Knoll spent 18 months studying Vietnamese-operated boats in Southern California for his 1997 master’s thesis in visual anthropology at USC. He interviewed more than 20 Vietnamese fishermen. They operate in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, and to a lesser degree Ventura County. They came here after being displaced from their homeland in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975, he said.

“Many Vietnamese fishermen come from the low rungs of the economic and educational ladders. There is no skills attainment process for these fishermen,” the 46-year-old Pasadena resident said.

Knoll, who worked closely with McClain on his thesis, titled “Living on the Edge,” is blunt in his assessment of the Vietnamese fishermen’s attitudes about death and danger: “They have a scary disregard for the danger of death.

“Death is a threat when you face it. But they do little to face it, and if you’re not right in front of it, death is just one of many other risks,” Knoll said.

Supporting Families

More important to many fishermen, he said, is supporting their families. “They say, ‘I have to earn money so my family can survive for another day,’ ” Knoll said. “The risk of dying comes second.”

As part of his thesis, Knoll updated a Vietnamese-language safety videotape. Some of the topics include how to operate safety equipment, such as Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, or EPIRBs, as well as body-heat-retaining survival suits and life rafts.

“These boats are equipped with the proper tools, but the people who operate these boats don’t fully comprehend how to use the tools,” Knoll said.

Knoll said language is just one barrier facing many Vietnamese fishermen.

“It is not enough to know the words, it is understanding the meanings behind the concepts,” he said.

Some Vietnamese fishermen barely know a word of English. Then there are younger, fairly eloquent members. “It’s a street-wise eloquence and aggressiveness. But again, as far as understanding a safety concept, it did not measure up to the complexity of the problem presented to them,” Knoll said.

Investigators have said a language barrier is partly to blame for the six-hour search for the crew of the Lindy Jane. However, Knoll listened to the Coast Guard tapes of the transmission and said the man making the emergency calls--believed to be Duong--spoke clear English.

“The Vietnamese fisherman understood fully the questions the Coast Guard asked,” Knoll said. “But the transmission was a problem.”

At first thought to be a cohesive group, the fishermen turned out to be just the opposite.

Among Knoll’s recommendations is that Vietnamese fishermen unite. That would give them a collective voice and a viable forum to disseminate safety information, including the updated videotape. So far, there is no such organization.

Ventura fisherman Terry Wilmarth, 44, who docks near the Vietnamese boats, said the Vietnamese often are left behind in the safety education process because of the language barrier.

For example, when an oil company offered $5,000 grants for safety equipment a few years ago, the Vietnamese fishermen did not respond.

“Five grand will put you right in there with a lot of survival stuff,” he said.

Ngyuen’s friend, Cho Le, said many Vietnamese fishermen are only as safe as their ability to read the clouds of an incoming storm.

The 44-year-old gardener from Canoga Park, who left Vietnam for Hong Kong in a 20-foot powerboat in 1979, lost six members of his family in one boating accident in Vietnam. He left fishing after nearly losing his father in a separate accident. Le said his father and another man were tossed from their bamboo boat in a storm at sea. They swam to shore and were stranded two days before help arrived.

“In my country, there is no safety at all, except bamboo. It floats very good. They go fishing and they have no weather report. They just look at the skies. They know what to do by experience,” Le said.

Comfort in Buddhism

Le suggested that perhaps some fishermen, in taking such huge risks, take comfort in the Buddhist belief in reincarnation.

“When the Vietnamese people die, they will transform to another life, they hope. If you die and it looks normal, your soul will be happy to go away and you will rebirth to another family.”

As the families hold ceremonies for the men who died on the Lindy Jane, investigators are preparing for what they say will be a difficult investigation.

“Since the information is not going to get any worse in the next couple of days, I’m giving them the time,” said lead Coast Guard investigator Kathy Moore.

“When you don’t have a vessel and you don’t have the ability to have interviews with the people on board the boat when things went wrong, you talk to anybody who’s been on the boat. You talk to the owner of the boat,” Moore said.

“Because of the language barrier, we will have to sit down and draw lots of pictures,” she said.

As for what caused the boat to sink, Moore said it is too early to know.

The owner of the Lindy Jane, Muoi “Timmy” Duong, 36, who is the brother of Tam Duong, told The Times that the boat’s drive shaft had been replaced the week before the deadly trip, which began April 15.

He also said there were two other leaks recently, including one at the rudder.

“The rudder, it leaked a little bit. But San fixed that,” Duong said. “He took four or five days to fix it. Not much water would get in. If it leaked around there it couldn’t make the boat sink.”

Despite being short of funds, Duong said he encouraged the crew to do whatever it took to fix the boat.

“I tell them it had to be repaired all the way so it wouldn’t break down. I really have no more money at all. They did all they could,” Duong said.

Richard Metcalfe, 36, of Ventura, has worked in the fishing industry for years and knew Tan Le for about eight years. On a recent afternoon, he came to where the Vietnamese boats docked to remember his friend.

“When you lose three fishermen, in my opinion, it’s a sad deal,” Metcalfe said.

The Coast Guard, he said, should do more to help the Vietnamese, including using more Vietnamese-speaking crew members. Metcalfe said he has even lobbied the National Weather Service to provide some of its information in Vietnamese.