It was a tragic start to the seal hunt early Saturday, March 29 as three sealers died and one remained missing after a fishing vessel slammed into a piece of ice and capsized in waters off Cape Breton while being towed by a Canadian Coast Guard ship.

Two of the six crew onboard the 12-metre boat from Iles de la Madeleine in Quebec were rescued. The fishing trawler was being towed into Sydney when it hit ice and flipped.

Meanwhile, questions – and anger – have arisen over why the men were left on the vessel while it was being towed. For it’s part the Coast Guard says it will conduct an incident safety review, which will include its towing policy.

The Transportation Safety Board will undertake its own investigation.

On Friday afternoon, March 28, L’Acadien II broke down in the ice northeast of Neil’s Habour, Cape Breton, N.S.

“In the early hours of the (March 29) morning a fishing vessel, L’Acadien II, reported problems with the steering and was being towed through the ice by the Canadian Coast Guard ship, Sir William Alexander, just off Cape North, about 40 nautical miles north of Sydney, and while they were towing (the L’Acadien II) overturned,” said Canadian Forces naval commander Mike Considine, a Joint Task Force Atlantic public affairs officer, speaking for the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax.

“So, providing routine assistance to a disabled vessel became a search and rescue mission.”

The three dead sealers were identified as Bruno Bourque, the boat’s owner and captain, Gilles Leblanc, who was in his 50s, and Marc-Andre Deraspe, a 20-year-old junior hockey star poised to take a run at the pro leagues.

Iles de la Madeleine Mayor Joel Arseneau also identified Carl Aucoin, in his 20s, as the person who was missing.

The search for Aucoin has been called off and he is presumed dead. Aucoin’s disappearance has been turned over to RCMP as a missing persons case.

The L’Acadien II was one of about 16 boats carrying 100 hunters who headed out the day before from Iles de la Madeleine, steaming toward a large herd of seals in the Cabot Strait that connects the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the Atlantic Ocean, between Cape Breton and Newfoundland.

“At the time the vessel overturned there were actually two of the six crew members on deck and they got free and they were immediately recovered. Four other members of the crew onboard were below deck and didn’t get clear, so the search and rescue technicians with the diving gear on, dove and did an exhaustive search and actually located three deceased members of the crew,” said Considine.

The Sydney Mines Volunteer Fire Department dive team was on standby in Neil’s Harbour, while a Cormorant helicopter and Hercules airplane, both based out of Greenwood, N.S., responded to the search-and-rescue mission.

The Sydney Mines divers and equipment were called in by the search-and-rescue centre in case military personnel needed assistance.

It turned out they were not needed.

Sydney Mines deputy fire chief Paul MacCormick said although the volunteer dive team was eventually called off, it is important to be ready to respond at all times. The call for help came in around 2:30 a.m. Saturday, and the dive master and crew were on the road with equipment in tow by 3 a.m. They returned home about 10:30 a.m.

“I wouldn’t class that as a routine call,” said MacCormick. “It was quite a distance to travel. We didn’t have a problem with it though. That’s the business we’re in.”

Dive master Bob Bonnar said he took three other divers with him, although the Sydney Mines team consists of seven active divers who are trained to dive in most conditions.

“If I got out there and felt we weren’t qualified, I would have said ‘No, we can’t do it,’” said Bonnar.

The community where the dead men were from is in a state of shock and sadness. Media reports have said the community of 13,000 people was so overcome by the tragedy that they cancelled the rest of their season.

Witnesses have said the coast guard ship was going too fast and failed to realize the 12-metre trawler had swerved into a large cake of ice and flipped.

RCMP Sgt. Dan MacGillivray said officers are conducting investigations in North Sydney and in Iles de la Madeleine.

Meanwhile, only a few hours after the deadly incident, seven other sealers aboard the 17-metre Annie Marie were forced to abandon their boat as the vessel sank in the same frigid waters. The group waited on pack ice for a helicopter, which picked them up late afternoon on March 29 and transported them home to the Iles-de-la-Madeleine.

(From Transcontinental Media’s Cape Breton Post newspaper.)