FV Dianne families plead for maritime surveillance overhaul

The sole survivor of dive boat FV Dianne has demanded overhauls to maritime emergency response systems.

The crew of dive boat FV Dianne, which sank in October.

The sole survivor of dive boat FV Dianne, which took the lives of six men when it capsized off Queensland in October, has spoken publicly for the first time since the tragedy, urging overhauls to maritime emergency response systems that family members believe failed the lost crewmen.

The victims possibly floated in a “rescue window” of more than five hours in deadly seas.

“Changes to vessel-monitoring system tracking with fisheries and emergency response departments’ policies and procedures will definitely help to save lives now and in the future,” said Ruben McDornan, 32, who survived by clinging to the upturned hull. Mr McDornan was speaking out in support of a 42-page report shattered family members have handed the Australian Maritime Safety Authority calling for immediate ­reforms to maritime safety.

“Our boys waited all night to be rescued and no one came,” the ­report states. “Because no one knew. It is not good enough.”

The report is the product of five months of exhaustive research by siblings Joel Feeney and Jackie Perry whose brother Zac Feeney, 28, was lost at sea with fellow sea-cucumber dive boat crewmen Eli Tonks, 39, Adam Bidner, 33, and Chris Sammut, 34. The bodies of skipper Ben Leahy, 45, and Adam Hoffman, 30, were found by police.

The report spotlights a widespread grievance in commercial fishing: government agencies insist fishers install vessel-monitoring systems on their boats but are reluctant to use the largely compulsory systems for safety monitoring.

“At the moment VMS is purely a fisheries management tool,” says AMSA chairman Stuart Richey in The Weekend Australian Magazine today. “It is set to send off an alert if a fishing boat goes into a closed area or into a protected area. Unfortunately, it’s not monitored currently 24 hours a day so that if the VMS stops transmitting, the fisheries might not even know for 24 hours or more.”

In the sinking of Dianne, Joel Feeney said, VMS data retrospectively revealed “the boat stopped sending a signal at seven o’clock” (most likely when the vessel was upturned). “It’s very important to know that in the case of Dianne, it was afloat (though capsized) for possibly 5½ hours,” Mr Feeney said. “We know this through Ruben. Those boys were possibly alive for 5½ hours before it sunk. That’s a long window for things to happen.” Dianne was the fourth commercial fishing vessel to capsize off the Wide Bay coast in the past two years. Twelve lives were lost in those incidents. At least 19 Australian commercial fishers have died on the job in the past five years.

The report to AMSA cites a 2006 coroner’s report from then Queensland coroner Michael Barnes into the death of Rodney Baker, whose vessel, Gulf Stream, sank off Moreton Island in 2004.

“Commercial fishing boats are required by law to use electronic locating technology so that authorities can keep them under surveillance to ensure they are not fishing in closed waters,” Mr Barnes said 12 year ago. “It is unacceptable that the same technology is not mandated to be used to guard the safety of the crew.”