Mayday on the Carolina Queen

Mayday on the Carolina Queen

The seven fishermen aboard the Carolina Queen III, a 76-foot scalloping baiter that set out from Norfolk, Va., had been at sea for four canicule if the skies blurred off the bank of the Rockaways.

A able storm arrangement that had already lashed the East Coast, bringing tornadoes, thunder, lightning, top apprehension and abundant rains, was barreling down on them. Homes had been flattened, cars had been tossed like Tinkertoys and copse had been ripped from their roots. At atomic seven humans had died. The aggregation knew they were in for awful weather, but they were scallopers. Acclimate comes with the job.

Mayday on the Carolina Queen

As night fell on Feb. 24, the apprehension started to draft beyond New York City. At 8:45 p.m., a ample area of a bluff burst on Fordham Street in the Bronx. At 9:19, a tractor-trailer was destroyed over on the top akin of the George Washington Bridge. By midnight, there were letters of downed copse and adeptness curve about the region.

Off the coast, apprehension were gusting up to 69 afar an hour, according to abstracts calm by the National Acclimate Service.

The men on the Carolina Queen had a accommodation to make. One acknowledged 11-day scalloping cruise can cull in a accumulation of $500,000. Anniversary fisherman can accomplish $40,000 on a acceptable voyage. The aggregation was open-sea fishing, about 30 afar off the coast, as the storm approached. The men absitively to beacon the barge afterpiece to bank — accomplished a agreed bound band that would stop the alarm on their allotted 32-day anniversary absolute at sea.

The Carolina Queen had alone 50 accoutrements of scallops — 60 pounds per bag — on ice in the hold. With the cockle division cartoon to a close, this cruise was the crew’s endure adventitious for a aloft haul. If the skies cleared, they expected, they would get aback to business.

But anon afterwards 2 a.m. on Feb. 25, the vessel, aged by wind and waves, ran aground. Soon, one of its generators bootless and the Carolina Queen issued a atrocious mayday, ambience in motion a agonizing accomplishment operation.

In the next few hours, a Bank Guard baiter agitated and Fire Department argosy were clumsy to adeptness the abandoned cockle baiter because of the weather. Ultimately, the Bank Guard absitively to undertake a adventuresome airlift operation by a aggregation accomplished from Atlantic City.

“Nothing about this absolutely was routine,” said Deputy Chief George Healy of the New York Fire Department. “This was a actual betraying operation.”

The airmen and women at Bank Guard Air Base Atlantic City accumulate a goldfish in their “survival shop,” area they accessory up afore missions. The swimmer, as they alarm it, is alleged Ashton, a advertence to Ashton Kutcher in his role as a Bank Guard accomplishment swimmer in the broadly mocked, cliché-ridden 2006 cine “The Guardian” — and a wry acceptance that the Bank Guard is not consistently accorded the affectionate of account aloof for added branches of the military.

But the Bank Guard plays a basic role in attention the nation’s amphibian interests. Aback it was captivated into the Department of Homeland Security, active agitation has been added to the sprawling mission agitated out by its 88,000 active-duty, reserve, noncombatant and abetting men and women confined about the world. Despite the broadcast responsibilities, its account has been buffeted; in his 2015 State of the Bank Guard Address, Adm. Paul F. Zukunft, the Bank Guard commandant, said 40 percent of the accretion account had been bargain over the antecedent four years.

“I’m anxious that crumbling platforms and crumbling basement abide to arrest mission success,” Admiral Zukunft said. “Today we’re seeing cogent access in appeal beyond all of our circadian activities, and it banned our adeptness to acknowledge to aloft contingencies. Indeed, we are adverse a time like none added in our about 225 years of service.”

Air Bank Guard Base Atlantic City, at the William J. Hughes Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center at the Atlantic City International Airport, is the abutting air base to New York City. It was formed in 1998 if Bank Guard Air Base Brooklyn and Group Air Base Cape May, New Jersey, were merged. The fleet comprises 10 MH-65D Dolphin helicopters. Its crews are amenable for accoutrement hundreds of afar of bank in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia — as able-bodied as autogenous accolade and rivers such as Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware and Hudson Rivers and Long Island Sound. Two helicopters are consistently accessible to be aerial aural 30 minutes.

Lt. Mark Bruno, 31, was the aircraft administrator on assignment on Feb. 25 if the alarm came in that a fishing barge off the bank of the Rockaways was in trouble. At 4:30 a.m. his aggregation was accomplished to New York City.

The Dolphin helicopter can fly faster than 160 m.p.h., but it would still yield about 45 account to adeptness the Carolina Queen.

The helicopter aggregation associates — including Lt. j.g. Maggie Champlin, 32, the co-pilot; Petty Officer Additional Class Kensuke Caldwell, 34, the flight mechanic; and Petty Officer Third Class Joe Glaser-Reich, 27, the accomplishment swimmer — took off in atramentous anon afore 5 a.m., alive actual little about what they ability find.

“We knew it was a fishing vessel, and fishing argosy are consistently tricky,” Lieutenant Bruno said. There are curve and riggings to argue with, and there generally is actual little allowance for error, abnormally if aggravating to backbone anyone off the deck.

And it can be added complicated if the barge is no best afloat.

“Normally, if a baiter is on the waves, it has a assertive rhythm,” Lieutenant Bruno said. That is not the case if it has run aground.

As the aggregation sped north, it was in advice with the Fire Department, which accustomed on the arena anon afore 5 a.m. It was anon bright that this would not be a aboveboard operation.

The aboriginal ache arresting to the alfresco apple from the Carolina Queen was an emergency blaze that lit up the sky anon afterwards 4:30 a.m.

Mayday on the Carolina Queen

Aaron Bell, 25, a UPS artisan who lives in an accommodation abreast the baptize on Bank 56th Place in Queens, said it was so airy and blurred “you couldn’t even see the ocean” from the shore.

But anyone spotted the flare.

Chief Healy said the aboriginal 911 alarm came in at 4:42 a.m. Emergency responders were on the arena at 4:47.

Chief Healy has 25 years on the job. He has apparent all sorts of disasters and is not one for overstatement. The address was not added than 80 yards from shore. But already acquaintance was fabricated with those on board, it was bright that the address and its aggregation were in acute trouble.

“We directed the captain and aggregation to put on acknowledgment suits,” Chief Healy said. “We had a abhorrence that the baiter was traveling to capsize.”

Waves were cresting as top as 14 anxiety and breaking on the ship.

The scallopers were as abandoned as they ability accept been in the accessible ocean.

As the Fire Department was responding, a 25-foot Bank Guard accomplishment baiter was aswell antagonism to the scene.

Dispatched by Bank Guard Base Jones Beach, the baiter agitated in the asperous amnion abreast East Rockaway Inlet afore it accomplished the Carolina Queen. Its aggregation associates had to save themselves, pond to shore.

The aggregation aboard the helicopter abstruse of that blow as they fabricated their way up the coast.

“You get a little afraid audition that,” Lieutenant Bruno said. “But it was acceptable to apperceive they were safe.”

That allotment of the adventure is still beneath investigation; the Bank Guard beneath to acknowledgment questions about what ability accept gone wrong.

The Fire Department had accomplishment boats to deploy, but the seas were so astringent that the F.D.N.Y. absitively to delay for air support.

A Fire Department helicopter, alone a abbreviate ambit abroad at Floyd Bennett Field, was ashore because of the abundant fog.

The aggregation of the Carolina Queen would accept to wait.

Scallop fishing may not adjure up the adventurousness of those communicable crabs in the icy amnion of the Bering Strait or the exploits of long-line adolescent fisherman actual on shows like “The Deadliest Catch.” But the a lot of alarming fishing area in America abide those off the Northeast Bank — added alarming than the Bering Sea, according to abstracts calm by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 humans died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast.

The cockle industry had the second-highest amount of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100,000 workers. A allotment of all workers in the United States over the aforementioned period, according to the C.D.C., there were four deaths per 100,000 workers. The admeasurement of the aggregation and the time at sea accord to the dangers.

Drew Minkiewicz, a advocate who represents the Fisheries Adaptation Fund, said that aback 2010, the amount of argosy acceptable to angle for scallops has been limited, and with beneath unregistered ships at sea, there accept been beneath accidents.

The Atlantic sea cockle — Placopecten magellanicus — has been accepted aback the 1950s, if Norwegian immigrants aboriginal scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The accumulation could beat amid absence and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms accepted as amber tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to abort the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even afterwards those tides passed, the industry about did itself in by overfishing. Alone afterwards regulations were anesthetized in the 1990s and the industry affiliated calm with the accurate association to advance fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound.

Now, scalloping alternating the Atlantic Bank from Maine to Arctic Carolina is a allotment of the a lot of advantageous fishing in the world. In 2014, the bolt was estimated to be account added than $424 million.

Most of the ships that angle these amnion are registered with the National Marine Fisheries Service, including the Carolina Queen. The address is endemic by the Wells Cockle Company, a Virginia-based ancestors operation that stretches aback four generations.

Bill Wells, who runs the company, beneath to allocution about the incident. Through an industry spokesman, he said he capital to acknowledge both the Bank Guard and the New York City emergency responders and said that the adventure had been classified as an accident, with no accountability activate on the allotment of the aggregation and no fines issued adjoin his company.

The industry operates beneath austere guidelines, abounding aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To angle some areas with accepted cockle beds, a admittance is needed, and the booty is capped. Open-sea fishing, on the added hand, is belted alone by the anniversary 32-days-at-sea limit.

The alarm is consistently ticking.

“We get so few canicule to go out, we accept to acquisition every ability to aerate our canicule at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a baiter alleged the Rigulus, is allotment of the tight-knit scalloping community.

In alertness for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the aggregation would accept spent canicule accepting ready, affairs $3,000 in groceries, loading added than 20,000 accoutrements of ice and prepping the accessories on the twin-dredge vessel.

The barge aflame arctic from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to adeptness the bank off New Jersey, area the aggregation would apparently accept started fishing. Again the plan would begin.

It is appealing accepted for a aggregation to plan eight hours on and yield four hours off, but in absoluteness it generally is added like nine hours on and three off. If you are a acceptable sleeper, you are advantageous to get two hours’ coma afore branch aback on deck.

The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops absterge for about 50 account and are again hauled up, their bolt dumped on accouter afore the twos are displace and plunged aback into the water, a action that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

Mayday on the Carolina Queen

While the absterge did its work, the aggregation on assignment on the Carolina Queen sorted through the addled mix of rocks and bank and added flotsam on the ship’s deck, searching for the bouncing annular shells of the scallops.

“The better crisis is administration the accessory on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is actual abundant accessory on a casting deck, and you get a lot of afflicted feet, afflicted hands.”

Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they accept to be shucked by hand.

The aggregation spends hours aperture the shells and slicing out the abductor beef of the mollusks — the fat, appetizing bait that apprehension up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, area a bowl of sea scallops à la plancha costs as abundant as $33.

A individual baiter can booty 4,000 pounds in a day. By the time the Carolina Queen ran aground, it was accustomed alone about 3,000 pounds. As the Bank Guard helicopter circled overhead, however, the scallops on ice beneath accouter were not the a lot of acute concern.

It was about 5:30 a.m.

“It was absolutely a alarming bearings they were in,” Lieutenant Bruno said. “They had absent their architect and were demography on water, and I anticipate that is if they fabricated the accommodation that they had to appear off.”

But how?

As the helicopter approached the Rockaways, the Bank Guard, in appointment with the Fire Department on shore, had appear up with a plan. By again there were dozens of emergency workers on the beach.

Petty Officer Glaser-Reich, the accomplishment swimmer, would be bargain into the cream to appraise the situation, and if all went well, bathe anniversary abandoned fisherman to shore.

The fog was still blubbery as the helicopter fabricated its aboriginal across-the-board canyon overhead. Circling about a additional time, the fog had austere abundant to put Petty Officer Glaser-Reich into the water.

Petty Officer Glaser-Reich had abutting the Bank Guard alive he capital to become a accomplishment swimmer. He had fabricated up his apperception afterwards spending a summer alive as an ocean lifeguard in Kitty Hawk, N.C.

He completed Aviation Adaptation Technician A School in December 2014 and is now, at 27, a absolutely able accomplishment swimmer.

In the advance of his training, he had been allotment of array of accomplishment drills. But he had never accomplished on a address that had run aground.

As anon as he splashed down in the churning surf, it was bright that putting the fishermen into the baptize would not work.

“I swam in to shore, area the helicopter best me up and again after deployed me to the bow of the boat,” he said. “It was absolutely rocking, bouncing aback and forth.”

“The address was advertisement 45 degrees to port,” he said. “The aggregation was all dressed in their adaptation apparel if I landed on the bow of the boat. They were actual cooperative. Several of them had baby atramentous debris accoutrements abounding with claimed furnishings that they asked if they could accompany with them. They absolutely seemed accessible to leave.”

Even if the rescuers had managed to rig some affairs from address to shore, which the Fire Department was able to do, the scallopers would accept had to bound 25 to 30 anxiety into the baptize and again argue with after-effects added than 12 anxiety high.

“It had looked altered from the air, but already I was on the address it was bright that that plan would not work,” Petty Officer Glaser-Reich said.

The Bank Guard absitively to lift anniversary of the seven abandoned men from the baiter application a accomplishment bassinet — a aerial operation.

“Water was already in the hull, and the address was affective in a way abstracted from the way the ocean was moving,” recalled Petty Officer Glaser-Reich.

Lieutenant Bruno hovered the helicopter some 40 anxiety aloft the barge as Petty Officer Glaser-Reich loaded the scallopers, one by one, into the basket.

And one by one, they were alien to shore, area the Fire Department was waiting.

As morning broke, the helicopter had been aerial for added than two hours, and there were still fishermen on the ship. Ammunition was active alarmingly low. Time was active out.

The seventh man — the captain — cutting jeans and a sweatshirt, was the endure to leave the ship.

He asked about actual with the barge but agreed in the end that it was best to go. “His activity getting added admired than a section of equipment,” Petty Officer Glaser-Reich noted.

As the captain was loaded into the basket, Lieutenant Bruno looked at his ammunition gauge. He had four account left.

With the captain cautiously deposited on bank and the mission complete, Lieutenant Bruno flew to Floyd Bennett Field and set the helicopter down.

All seven fishermen were safe and were transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center for observation. None was actively injured.

The ship, too, was salvaged. It is now getting repaired at a shipyard in Massachusetts.

Even the scallops on lath were saved. They were awash to a banker based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Petty Officer Glaser-Reich, absorption on the rescue, said it was both the easiest and the hardest he had anytime taken allotment in.

“It was my first,” he said.

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