Australia’s commercial fishing industry has backed a coroner’s findings from an inquest into eight deaths after two Queensland trawlers sank.

September 2, 2019

The peak body representing Australia’s commercial fishing industry has urged authorities and fishers to stop making excuses and implement a safety measure to alert police when a boat vanishes.

Seafood Industry Australia has backed a coroner who investigated the deaths of eight men on two trawlers that sank off the Queensland coast in 2016 and 2017.

Coroner David O’Connell recommended the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries immediately implement a Vessel Monitoring System safety feature to the existing fisheries monitoring network.

It would send an SMS or email to police if a boat or ship fails to “poll” on the VMS and may have averted the hours of delay before rescue operations began when the FV Cassandra and FV Dianne capsized.

SIA chief executive Jane Lovell agrees, saying there’s a lot of reasons why it can’t work, but it’s now time to push these aside and make it happen.

“We need to look at those barriers and say ‘really?’,” she told AAP.

“If you’ve got a VMS on your boat why wouldn’t you value add and use it as a safety mechanism – it’s incredibly logical,” she told AAP.

Ms Lovell said many people in the industry support value-adding to the existing VMS network but implementation is frustrated by the “practicalities of it.”

The issues raised concern: who owns the VMS data, is it being monitored regularly enough to provide a safety net and is it Fisheries Queensland’s job?

“If it’s the legislation stopping it then that’s what we need to change,” she said.

Ms Lovell acknowledged that many cash-strapped fishers would find it tough to pay for a VMS unit but where it was already in use she supported adding another layer of safety for the industry.

The inquest investigated the deaths of Matt Roberts, 61, and David Chivers, 36, who perished when the FV Cassandra overturned off Fraser Island in the early hours of April 4, 2016.

Wild seas prevented rescuers from reaching the two men, who were thought to have been in the cabin before the vessel went down.

The men were found to have drowned after the trawler capsized in wild seas while attempting to recover a net snagged on the seafloor.

Their bodies were never found.

Mr O’Connell also examined the deaths of six men on the FV Dianne, which rolled and sank off the Town of 1770 on October 16, 2017.

The Dianne’s sole survivor, Ruben McDornan, forced a door open against the rushing water and swam to the surface before clinging to the trawler’s upturned hull.

He was rescued the following morning by a passing catamaran.

Adam Hoffman, 30, Eli Tonks, 39, Adam Bidner, 33, Zach Feeney, 28, Chris Sammut, 34, and Mr Leahy, 45, drowned.

Two men were trapped in the upturned hull, their escape blocked by a freezer that had broken free in the wheelhouse.

The cause of the capsize was left as an opening finding.

Rescue operations were delayed until May Day calls were received for both vessels.

In the case of the Cassandra, the delay was more than four hours and for the Dianne it was more than 12-hours after capsize.

The VMS safety function is already used in Western Australia and the UK.