A Taiwanese fishing vessel crew and members of the Coast Guard on Oahu worked together to find and rescue the crew of a Honolulu tuna longliner that was sinking 545 miles southwest of Hawaii on Thursday night.
According to a news release from Coast Guard District 14, after a harrowing ordeal at sea, all six crew members of the Sea Smile were in good shape and making their way back to the islands aboard Honolulu longliner Captain Minh as of Friday afternoon.
At 6:46 p.m. Thursday the Coast Guard’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu watch-standers received a report from the owner of the Sea Smile stating the vessel was disabled and taking on water. The crew said they had taken on five to seven feet of water in the engine room and fish holds, that water was rapidly rising, and loss of power had disabled the vessel’s dewatering pumps.
The Coast Guard said it confirmed that there were enough personal flotation devices for all crew members as they prepared to abandon ship aboard a life raft, and instructed the captain to activate the vessel’s emergency position- indicating radio.
“Any time you get word that a crew is preparing to abandon ship, you immediately become worried about the time required to reach the survivors,” said Cmdr. Marc McDonnell, operations officer for Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point.
A Coast Guard C-130 out of Air Station Barbers Point used the Automated Mutual- Assistance Vessel Rescue System, a voluntary reporting system that mariners and search and rescue agencies use to coordinate help for people in distress far at sea. Once on scene, the C-130 crew dropped two self-locating datum marker buoys, a VHF radio and survival supplies for the fishermen.
Ying Rong No 638 — which according to Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission records is registered in Taiwan and home-ported at Honolulu’s sister city of Kaohsiung — was among the vessels that answered the AMVER call, and at midnight found the Sea Smile’s crew in the darkness and took them aboard.
They then waited for the Captain Minh and handed off the rescued fishermen to continue their journey back to Honolulu.
Relations between Hawaii’s longline fleet and foreign fishing vessels around Hawaii has at times been strained as they have competed for tuna hauls, with Honolulu fishermen occasionally complaining of being intimidated or even chased off by much larger foreign vessels that can operate at sea for months or even years delivering their catches to large freezer ships that transport them back to Asia.
In March 2020 the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council in Honolulu sent a letter to the U.S. State Department after a violent encounter between a Taiwanese vessel and a Honolulu longliner demanding officials “follow up on complaints of assault by foreign fishing vessels on the Hawaii-based U.S. longline fishery and take appropriate diplomatic actions.”
But this week, officials expressed nothing but gratitude for Ying Rong No 638’s crew.
“In last night’s case, we appreciate the support of the good Samaritans aboard the commercial vessel Ying Rong No 638, who made this rescue possible,” said McDonnell. “Given the remote area, this was a complex case, but our crews train for this exact scenario and we are fortunate to say that the training paid off.”
