Nine crew members in good condition after rescue from Arctic waters

By The Canadian Press

IQALUIT, Nunavut – The nine crew members who survived a fishing vessel’s sinking off Baffin Island Monday are getting high praise from both the ship’s owner and a navy commander for remaining calm and professional as they were being tossed around in a life-raft by heaving Arctic seas.

Bradley Watkins of Cottlesville, N.L., says the vessel’s captain and the crew used their training to calmly don survival suits and safely board their life-raft as their fishing vessel Atlantic Charger was taking on water.

“Their training shone through. … They knew what they were doing,” said Watkins in a telephone interview.

Rear Admiral John Newton, commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic, said the crew of the distressed vessel demonstrated their training during the rescue.

“They had survival suits, they knew how to wear them, they gave the right kind of information to the search and rescue centre. … When the time came they made the really smart decision to abandon ship while they could do it in control,” he said.

He said the crew knew how to handle the life-raft and were able to haul in the gear being dropped to them from the Hercules aircraft.

All of the crew were described as healthy on Tuesday afternoon and were on board a fishing vessel that was steaming back to Harbour Grace.

Watkins also praised the skill of the personnel who participated in the search, including those aboard a military airplane that managed to drop a radio close enough to the life-raft that the crew were able to retrieve it and speak to the rescuers.

“That was amazing because the crew needed to know what was happening in order to be able to work with the coast guard,” he said.

The vessel, launched in July 2013, has been featured on television as a state-of-the-art vessel designed to withstand many of the harsh conditions that occur in late fall fishing in the Arctic ocean.

It is equipped for crab, shrimp and turbot fishing, and has a 12-person life-raft that was installed this year.

Watkins said he is uncertain why his vessel started to take on water and eventually sank, but he added he believed rougher than expected weather and four-metre seas played a role.

“They got caught in the weather forecast. It wasn’t what they thought. It wasn’t unheard of weather … it was just the combination of tides and weather and how things happened in the Davis Strait that all came together at the one time,” he said.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has sent a team to Newfoundland to look into the sinking.

Officials with the rescue co-ordination centre in Halifax said the rescue involved a co-ordinated effort between aircraft who arrived on the scene and four private vessels that steamed to the area.

Scott Burgwin, a coast guard officer at the centre, said the rescue began after an Aurora aircraft from Greenwood, N.S., that was flying over the area spotted the flares being fired from the life-raft on Monday afternoon.

He said a bulk ore carrier arrived on the scene on Monday evening, and provided protection from the waves as the fishing vessel Pamiuk drew alongside the life-raft and took the shivering men on board their zodiac. They were later transferred to the Greenland-based vessel Katsheshuk II.

Burgwin said the centre’s staff took a moment to cheer when word came that all nine were safe, and then returned to other cases.

“There are some high fives that go around, and we raced to the phone to tell … the next of kin,” said Burgwin.

“But we had other cases going on, and we can’t take our eyes off the ball.”

— By Michael Tutton in Halifax

Follow @mtuttoncporg on Twitter.

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