Two hunters were rescued from the water while three bodies were recovered from the overturned L’Acadien II, a 12-metre boat based in Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Que.
Divers searched the icy waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the remaining missing seal hunter Saturday afternoon and the search was scaled back by 6 p.m. local time.
“We searched the area extensively and we were unable to locate the one individual that was unaccounted for,” said Major Darrell Collins, the pilot of a Cormorant rescue helicopter that landed in Iles-de-la-Madeleine Saturday evening.
Other sealers from Iles-de-la-Madeleine were so overcome by the tragedy that they cancelled the rest of their season.
A fisherman aboard a sealing vessel trailing the disabled boat said the light icebreaker Sir William Alexander pulled L’Acadien II over a large chunk of ice, pitching it on its side as it came out of the water.
Paul Dickson said his father, captain of the Madelinot War Lord, called the icebreaker to alert them, but couldn’t get through.
“We were telling them to stop,” said Dickson, who didn’t see the boat capsize, but helped pull the two survivors aboard.
“They were pulling the boat over an ice cake … and it pulled the boat sideways and it went in the water and laid on its side and they kept pulling and it rolled right over.”
“If they hadn’t have pulled on it, it wouldn’t have capsized.”
Bruno-Pierre Bourque, one of two known survivors, says a combination of speed and inattention by the coast guard crew led to the accident.
Bourque says he was at the helm of the rudderless trawler when the icebreaker sped up.
“It all happened very fast, it was dark,” Bourque told Radio-Canada’s all-news channel RDI.
“A big piece of ice was suddenly in front of us, we couldn’t avoid it. We tried what we could but without a rudder there wasn’t much we could do … There was nobody on the icebreaker who was monitoring the tow.”
As the boat flipped, the six hunters inside scrambled to get out but only three succeeded, he said.
Dickson’s boat moved in and his crew plucked Bourque and another survivor from the sea.
“We tried to warm them up and they didn’t say too much,” Dickson said, adding that his crew tried to rescue the men inside the capsized boat.
“We didn’t have the equipment to do anything,” he said. “We cut a hole in the bottom of the boat and tried to get access inside from there, but it didn’t work.”
Dickson said he saw the boat slam into an “icecake” minutes before the second, fatal collision. The coast guard crew should have been paying “a lot more attention,” he said.
Bruno Bourque, Bruno-Pierre Bourque’s father and the ship’s captain, was among the dead.
Coast guard officials confirmed that the icebreaker attached a tow rope to the fishing boat around midnight and it capsized 90 minutes later.
Federal officials holding a news conference in Dartmouth, N.S., said they couldn’t comment on the speed of the vessel.
Mike Voigt, the Canadian Coast Guard’s superintendent of search and rescue, said it was up to the crew of the disabled vessel to determine whether they should stay aboard, and he confirmed that the crew is typically read a waiver that deals with responsibility and safety issues.
He said the coast guard tows up to 600 vessels a year, but it remains a rare, high-risk procedure when heavy ice closes in.
Voigt said the fishing boat had reported steering problems late Friday north of Cape Breton when the Sir William Alexander took it in tow, intending to haul the vessel to Sydney, N.S.
Iles-de-la-Madeleine Mayor Joel Arseneau released a list of the dead, which included Gilles Leblanc, a hunter in his 50s, and Marc-Andre Deraspe, a hunter in his early 20s.
Arseneau also identified Carl Aucoin as the missing hunter.
“We’re certainly in a state of shock here on the islands,” Arseneau said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“It’s the community as a whole that is mourning the deaths of three or four of our citizens and friends.”
Arseneau said the hunters have cancelled the rest of their season and the boats are returning home out of solidarity for their fellow hunters.
Navy Lt. Lora Collier said the two survivors were reported in good condition.
A helicopter took them back to the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, which is home to about 13,000 people.
Thick ice hampered fishing boats as they set out Friday on the opening day of the annual hunt.
Later in the day, seven sailors from Iles-de-la-Madeleine were rescued by a military helicopter after their 17-metre vessel, the Annie Marie, sank north of Cape Breton around 4 p.m.
“We found the men on the ice, they were all in pretty good condition,” said Collins, the pilot who dropped the men off at the Iles-de-la-Madeleine airport. “We hoisted them all off, and everyone is safe and sound.”
David Bevan, assistant deputy minister for fisheries and aquaculture management at the Fisheries Department, said there were no plans to suspend the hunt because of the ice.
But with a second hunt scheduled to open Sunday for New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, he said hunters were assessing whether they should go out.
“Right now all of the sealers from the Magdelan Islands have decided that they’re going to return to the Magdalen Islands and that they’re not going to continue with their hunting activities at this time,” Bevan said.
“There are other hunts opening tomorrow, but it’s not clear if the fishermen will actually be participating, so while there’s no official suspension, it’s pretty clear that people are looking at what’s going on and are making decisions on their own accord.”
The seven men on the Annie Marie abandoned the vessel as it took on water, and then waited on the pack ice for help.
On the weekend, ice conditions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence remained treacherous, with officials saying they believe there is a record amount squeezing into the gulf.
“It’s an exceptional year for ice,” said Tim Surette, a regional director for the Canadian Coast Guard.
Arseneau said he has a lot of questions to ask coast guard officials and expects an investigation. He questioned why sailors remained on their ship while it was towed.
Arseneau said boat captains were aware conditions were dangerous after a long, cold winter. There is almost an “ice barrier” between the islands and the sealing areas, he said.
L’Acadien II was part of a fleet of 16 boats that left the islands for the seal hunt on Wednesday and Thursday.
News of the accident quickly spread through the community of Iles-de-la-Madeleine, a collection of a dozen islands about 80 kilometres north of Prince Edward Island’s eastern tip.
“The large family of the islands is in mourning,” Arseneau said.
“It is a tragedy we could never envision. We know we are close to the sea and know it is possible, but we could never imagine that it could happen.”
When the hunt opened on Friday, fishermen from the islands steamed toward a large herd of seals in the Cabot Strait between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
In total, hunters are allowed to take up to 275,000 animals this season, virtually all of them young harp seals. About 70 per cent will be slaughtered next month in a vast area north of Newfoundland known as the Front.
Animal rights activists blamed the deaths on Canadian government policy allowing the seal hunt.
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