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NZSFC's POD AND REEL Podcast
Welcome to the Pod and Reel podcast, presented by the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council, a national body with over 50 affiliated clubs across New Zealand, and over 37,000 members.
Since 1957, NZSFC has focussed on setting standards for responsible fishing practices, collating records, organising events like the Nationals, and supporting its affiliated fishing clubs. This podcast dives deep into the history, the people, and the clubs that make up our fishing community. We'll explore the highs and lows of fishing and learn from mistakes made, striving to be better, safer, and smarter when we interact with the water. With 15,000 kilometres of coastline, New Zealand's fishing history is rich with stories of the tussle between us and the sea.
Join Mike Plant as we delve into these topics and more on the Pod and Reel podcast, your gateway to the world of all things fishing in New Zealand.
NZSFC's POD AND REEL Podcast
Episode 5: The Tragedy Off Gisborne: Lessons from a Fatal Bluefin Expedition
The tragic loss of three fishermen off the Gisborne coast last year sent shockwaves through New Zealand's fishing community. What began as a promising day with a forecast of just five knots of wind quickly deteriorated into a nightmare scenario of 20-knot winds and dangerous sea conditions.
Roger Faber, president of the Gisborne-Tatapouri Fishing Club, takes us through that fateful day when experienced club members Elwood Higgins, Taina Sinoti, and Damien McPherson headed offshore to chase bluefin tuna. Despite their experience, the rapidly deteriorating weather caught them in its grip, leading to one of New Zealand sport fishing's darkest chapters.
We hear from Henry Van Teel, Hawke's Bay Coast Guard skipper, who provides a gripping account of the rescue attempt amid six-metre swells and 50-knot winds. His team's agonising decision to turn back—despite knowing men were in the water—highlights the brutal risk calculations that sometimes must be made at sea. "There's no point hammering the boat and crew arriving on scene if you can't do anything," Van Teel explains, sharing the Coast Guard's disciplined approach to safety that recreational boaties can learn from.
The ripple effects of this tragedy transformed fishing practices nationwide. Hayden Johnson of the Whakatane Sport Fishing Club describes how his members rallied to raise funds for affected families while implementing mandatory safety equipment requirements. Clubs across New Zealand revisited their safety protocols, with increased emphasis on buddy boating, better weather forecasts, and the critical importance of EPIRBs and Personal Locator Beacons.
From improved communication systems to fundamental shifts in how fishers approach risk assessment, this powerful episode offers essential lessons for anyone who ventures offshore. As Van Teel poignantly states, "The most important piece of equipment is between your ears." Listen, learn, and ensure you come home safely from your next fishing adventure.
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Welcome back to the NZSFC Pod and Reel podcast. I'm Mike Plant from the New Zealand Sport Fishing Council. This week we're revisiting a tragedy that occurred last year off the coast of Gisborne, when three men lost their lives while fishing for bluefin tuna. We'll hear from Henry Van Teel, who was the skipper of the Hawke's Bay Coast Guard boat that ventured out to rescue these men. We'll also hear from the president of the Whakatane Sport Fishing Club and how it impacted their team on the ground. But first we're joined by Roger Faber, the president of the Gisborne Tatapuri Fishing Club. Roger, before we revisit what happened last year, this year has actually been an amazing fishing season for all your anglers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a great season which started early in December, which was awesome to see, with some real nice big iron. I think there were half a dozen over 100 kilos caught and then obviously yellowfin turned up with a similar sort of time, were amongst them and marlin slightly later. I think the first marlin was caught before Christmas, but a little bit later than the big eye and then after Christmas, new Year flowed on and yeah, all in all it'd probably be one of our best seasons ever, definitely best season I can ever remember for Yellowfin in the sort of 40-something years I've been involved with game fishing out here Amazing.
Speaker 1:And you know, gisborne's really got some challenging conditions to get out, and when you get those weather windows, the guys want to do it. And I guess that kind of leads us into what we're chatting about today, with what happened last year. And the weather window looked pretty good, didn't it? To start with? For you guys it was five knots, and can you tell me a bit about what the decision was to go fishing on that Monday? Was it a fishing comp? What was going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah on, yeah, okay. So basically we had had the weekend, um, there had been quite a number of boats out that had done very, very well on the bluefin tuna, in a pacific area which is called the southern dog's leg, which is about 30 miles sort of south of gisborne, directly off mahir peninsula um so some good fish had been caught, the talk was around and everything.
Speaker 2:Ourselves had looked at the forecast and saw a weather window. Five knots northerly was forecast. There was a little bit of swell, there was sort of two and a half meters swell, but thought, hey, with that sort of five knots it shouldn't be a problem, especially trolling et cetera. So four of us decided let's go. So 7am in the the morning we basically left the harbour. I got a Caribbean 40 launch and we headed down to that particular area, unbeknown to us at the time. We did run into one of the other boats, or come across I shouldn't say run into, come across one of the other boats that had a similar plan and that was a guy called Carl Bennett on his boat for real. We talked to him on the VHF radio, basically talked about our plan and what we were going to do for the day and sort of continued on. Now a big thing we noticed as we got sort of further on the forecast the breeze was definitely building and was up well over the five knots forecast and as we got out further and further got up to probably around about 20 knots from the north, which, yeah, it was sort of a little bit ugly on top of that sort of size northerly swell and some of the biggest sets were breaking as they sort of went along. We were in our boat, even pretty uncomfortable about those conditions and we didn't even put our outriggers out, we just put a couple of lures out and trolled slowly with the sea, hoping that the wind would drop off and the day would turn into pretty much what was forecast. And yeah, we just carried on like that for for a little while and, um, yeah, nothing really changed.
Speaker 2:Um, at the time carl in his boat had talked to elwood higgins, who's another local guy who had decided to go out. He went left a little bit later than us. His plan was to go to an area directly out of gisborne and then head down to where we were fishing and he talked on the vhf to him and basically we knew the three boats were out there and we basically just carried on doing our own thing. About 9 am we had a boat go across our bow, running side on to the swells. It blew a hull. It wasn't a boat that I recognized and actually my crew said who's that? And I said, oh well, it's not, uh, earlwood and it's not carl, it must be a boat out from mahi and we basically just left it at that and um carried on. Wasn't till later on, and very much later on and well and truly when we were back on shore, that we found out that that was actually Earl Woods. He actually had two boats unbeknown to me, both called Billy Boy. One was a five and a half meter pontoon which I was aware of, and then he had this West Coaster, which was a seven to eight meter west coaster, and that was a boat that actually went across our bow.
Speaker 2:At the time we carried on, just as I say, idling didn't drop off and we weren't comfortable with it. We had discussions about what we were going to do. It didn't seem to be dropping away and it was, uh, probably about 11 am. Carl Bennett gave me a call on the VHF and said, hey, this is not nice at all, it's pretty ugly, we're going to pull the pin, go back in. He's an ex-commercial longliner. He also worked for Eastland Port on their boats for a time. We'd already pretty much had that discussion and made the same decision that hey, this isn't nice, let's turn and start heading for home, which basically was into the sea to a degree.
Speaker 2:I tried to call Elwood at that stage and just see what his plans were and didn't get any reply. I wondered whether he'd already decided to go in or whether he'd even come out any further and he'd turned back earlier, et cetera, et cetera. But we slowly made our way home. We couldn't do a lot of pace. When we got inside the 100 meter line the sea did improve. That wind dropped off quite considerably and we were able to make better time, but we just basically moved and kept heading back towards the port. Carl had his son on board who actually did work at the Eastland port and he was able to get onto the cameras at the boat ramp car park and they actually called me up and said there was a trailer and a ute in the car park and they sort of were a little bit concerned for Elwood and what had happened and whether it was him or wasn't his vehicle or what we didn't know. And we did try and contact him on cell phone, which we didn't have any luck with, but at that stage we sort of weren't too sure what was happening etc. So we just kept our way home.
Speaker 2:At about 1pm I got back into the harbor. I was ahead of carl and immediately went down to the boat ramp to check out the vehicle. Now, the vehicle wasn't carl's vehicle. The trailer on the back of it was bigger than the pontoon boat that I knew of the billy boy that he had, and I wasn't sure whose it was or what they were doing. Being a northerly, the bay poverty bay was actually quite flat and quite nice in there because it's quite sheltered. So, wondered whether it was someone out there, I stayed around down that area, tried to make phone calls to some Earlwood's best mates to see if they knew where he was or what was going on, who was out with him, et cetera, et cetera, and a little bit of time did pass, and that's probably something I still regret to this day that we didn't call Coast Guard or the police earlier and we probably wasted an hour or so just trying to get in contact to get more information about whose vehicle this was, because it wasn't earlwood's ute.
Speaker 2:And uh, you know, and turned out that it was actually one earlwood's cruise damien mcpherson's ute that was on, was there? Um, but we didn't find that out to considerably time later carl was again in contact with us and he was very, very concerned as we were getting at that stage. He had rung Coast Guard one of the crew members or skippers on Coast Guard and informed him of what was going on and that we were concerned. And basically that was when the search was sort of started or the police started to coordinate getting Coast Guard together and Coast Guard were down there getting organized and on standby. Eastern Rescue Helicopter was also notified and put on standby.
Speaker 2:Things sort of progressed from there. The police came down and saw us, talked to us and got as much information. I talked to the Rescue Helicopter and Coast Guard about what we knew at that stage about where these guys were, what they were doing. It seemed like a long time but it may not have been a lot of time. But once they coordinated the search they started to head out to see what they could do. Probably that's a bit when we were listening on VHF radio to Coast Guard talking to them on the phone and basically they started heading out and it was just by that stage got worse and worse and worse. It was too rough for them to actually get totally out to where we'd last seen the guys and the rescue helicopter was sort of in a similar situation. They did manage to get out but had to turn back before they got to the search area. As far as I am aware, and basically it was just, yeah, being winter, it was dark, bro, just after five o'clock. So they only really got a couple of hours in searching before it was too dark and the search for the day had to be called off.
Speaker 2:We we actually had a committee meeting that night and I stayed down the club all day. I basically didn't go anywhere. The family by that time had come down to the boat ramp. They were obviously waiting to hopefully hear some good news. So they were around the boat ramp at a committee meeting.
Speaker 2:We did get requests from one of the family members to go out and search. This was after Coast Guard had come in and said it was too rough. I wasn't even in my boat, wasn't willing to go about and risk extra lives. I said if Coast Guard can't do their thing in those conditions we won't be able to do anything and searching at night would be basically impossible. But yes, media did get in touch with me and basically told them what we could and went live on air on the one news and the breakfast show on TV3 that it was the next morning, just to let people know what was going on, and we were all keeping our fingers crossed that something positive was going to happen. Iroquois was put up, the Air Force Iroquois was put up to search for them and basically, yeah, it was really just a waiting game. Probably one of the hardest things was sitting on shore in a harbour full of boats, where every boat in that harbour probably would have been out searching if conditions would have allowed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then there was a glimmer of hope, because it was known that this was it a cargo ship that was going past, spotted the men and this started making the news that they had been spotted alive in the ocean. But the ship was too big to stop or turn around and they threw some rescue gear. But that was pretty much. You know.
Speaker 2:It was that little glimmer of hope that everyone was hanging on to finally came through yeah, that was probably early afternoon the next day, so you know, probably 30 hours after the incident or whatever did happen to them actually took place. It was a I think it was a container ship and they went past. We were listening, listening on VHF, to Coast Guard or Maritime Rescue, I think it was at that stage. We're on there talking to them. They said they saw two men in the water waving their arms to them. Now, looking at the conditions at the time, it was gone round to southerly and it was 35, 40 knots and a huge sea. Under that swell those men would have been tossed around all over the place.
Speaker 1:These guys? They weren't amateur fishermen, they had done plenty of fishing. They were club members, of your club. One was a referee, so they were fit guys, weren't they?
Speaker 2:Yes, yep, All very fit young guys with young families, which is one of the worst parts about it all. They did a lot of fishing. They were members of the club. The club actually had two fishing contests running at the time. We had a bluefin tuna sweepstake running and we also had what we call our winter contest running, which had prizes for bluefin in it and also prizes for other species, which had prizes for bluefin in it and also prizes for other species. Coincidentally, none of these three guys had entered either of those contests. They had basically just decided that the yellowfin were running, there was a weather window to get out there and they decided to go for a pleasure fish that particular day Henry Vantel joins us.
Speaker 1:He is the president and skipper of Coast Guard Hawke's Bay. 16 years he's been there, and previously was in Wellington for six or seven years. So that's over two decades of experience. Henry, when were you made aware of this?
Speaker 3:Before we get too far into it, mike, I just want to recognise that Elwood, tana and Damien they lost their lives and you know our condolences and thoughts are with the whānau. So you know, I think when we talk this through I certainly remember that there are three people that lost their lives over this. I personally became aware of it about four o'clock, believe it or not, on Monday afternoon and it was a pure coincidence. So the police officer that led the initial search is actually a Hawke's Bay-based police officer and he's part of the Hawke's Bay SAR squad. So I knew him pretty well and we've worked through a number of other marine searches in the past. So he just rang and said hey look, henry, this is going down. I'm just looking for somebody external just to sort of give him a little bit of support. So it was clearly outside of our area. So, as I understood, it was on the east coast of Mahia and we certainly go up, if you like, to the bottom of Mahia, portland Island sort of thing. But from there on upwards it becomes a Gizzy job, simply because Gizzy can get there much more quickly than we can. So I just had a chat with Alex about what was going down and just sort of gave him some thoughts and stuff like that. We were quite clear at that stage we were not involved unless it got really big and they requested our assistance. But it was clearly seen and I know that Gizzy Aaron from Gizzy got on the water pretty quickly and then the Gizzy helicopter went there and did a search.
Speaker 3:I wasn't involved very closely but I was aware that Westerner went out as well, that there'd been some offers of assistance and stuff like that. So that's what we knew on Monday night. And I also knew that Westerner went out as well, that there'd been some offers of assistance and stuff like that. So that's what we knew on Monday night. And I also knew that the police had handed it over to RCCNZ. And that's simply for people's information. Is Roman knows it's about 18 nautical miles offshore, so it's beyond the 12-mile limit. That's the normal dividing line for RCCNZ and police. So I was aware that it had gone to RCCNZ and I was aware that there'd been a reach out to the Air Force to get a Poseidon and to do a search. So that was Monday night. So we were aware of it, we were aware that people were doing stuff, but at that stage we were directly involved.
Speaker 1:And so the search was mounted on Monday, but it was somewhat fruitless, because the conditions just got worse and hampered the emergency services.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and look, I don't think and this is particularly for your listeners and we can talk about it a little bit further on is that the reality. Like, if we're searching for what we call person in the water and it sounds terrible because you depersonalize it, but it's important to sort of like try and just do the process, putting the knight to one side. Think about you're looking for something the size of a basketball and really, in those conditions, probably what we call sweep width, that's the side, either side of the boat, probably a maximum of 100 meters, so 50 meters and 50 meters either side of the boat, and that a maximum of 100 metres, so 50 metres and 50 metres either side of the boat, and that's what you can search and, if you like, that's the area that we would sweep and then we would come down and do another leg and stuff like that. So it is really really quite small relative to the size of the sea. But, as you're saying, mike, the conditions just deteriorated that night. It was cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was cooled off until first light the next Tuesday, and then there was some hope. Two of the crew were spotted alive in the water by the crew of the African Tiger container ship.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I was aware of the Poseidon that night and in the morning I was aware that they'd done a radar search and a thermal search and found obviously found nothing. I got phoned just before midday at 11.51. The CNC rang us and said hey look, their drift model showed that there's a potential for the boat, if it was on the surface, to have actually come into Hawke Bay and would we be willing to carry out a search?
Speaker 3:At that stage they gave me an area of about 800 square nautical miles and I said look, no, basically, and the reason for that was the conditions were rough but manageable from our point of view. But the reality is, when you're searching that big an area, aerial asset is what you want. It's much faster than us and, to give you an idea, researching for a boat in those conditions we'd have a sweet width of, if you're really lucky, half a nautical mile call it 1,000 metres and you're dealing with 800 square nautical miles. It would be sheer luck that you found anything and no real starting points. So I said look, but if you see something, something we will give it a go and try and recover it so I guess it's quite remarkable the crew on this container ship.
Speaker 1:We're actually just able to see these men in the water as well. Like what are the chances of that?
Speaker 3:it's like if they had left I don't know what time they left Napier, but they had left Napier and were transiting through. What their advantage is is that, instead of being, say, on our boat CK, you're probably your eyesight two metres above sea level. On a log carrier you're talking about 50 or 60 metres, so you're looking down rather than trying to look across, if people can get that picture. But you're exactly right, it was just sheer luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, looking at the report, it was saying a six-metre swell and 50-knot winds and low visibility.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there were showers coming through and stuff and the fact that they could, so obviously they saw them and then they had to slow and come back, so they lost them but then found them again. So I mean it was just remarkable that they were able to do that.
Speaker 1:To be honest, it was just that ship I saw was 180 metres long, so manoeuvring in those conditions is so dangerous as well for that ship.
Speaker 3:And in fact they sustained some damage. I don't know what damage they sustained, but my understanding is, when they finally left, they said look, we've actually sustained some damage and we've got to go. So that was call it. Say midday-ish that they contacted me. And then, yeah, 1340, so 20 to 2, a CCNZ rang us and told them that two persons in the water had been spotted off Portland Island. And my first thought was you have got, you know really? So, look, I had already rung crew because of the earlier approach, so we had handpicked a crew to go if something turned up. So I rang the crew and said hey, look, this is a situation I think it's doable from our point of view. If you're happy, you can come, and so we put a crew together.
Speaker 1:How do you make that call between wanting to go out and do your job and also keeping a bit of mind for your own family, your crew's family, those you're putting at risk?
Speaker 3:That's the hard part. I remember vividly my first skipper, morris Guppy, when I was down in Wellington and Morris was really strong, he said look, if you look, there's no point in hammering the boat and the crew arriving on scene and you can't do anything. It sounds brutal, but your first priority is look after your crew. If you look after your crew when you get on scene, you can do something. But if you don't look after yourselves, you're not going to be able to do the job. And we religiously on this job, every half an hour we don't stop the boat. What's the weather getting better or worse? How's the crew going? What's the boat doing? What's our fuel burn? What fuel have we used? It's kind of like you take a stop, take every half an hour. If it's good to go, you carry on, if it's not good to go, you make another call. And so those are my things and at the end of the day I take really seriously that I've got a moral obligation to my crew to bring them back.
Speaker 3:And that's what we did on this job is as soon as we left. So we gassed up, obviously, made sure we had every litre of diesel on the boat that we could get. A 12-metre boat, 960 horsepower. So we've got twin 480s driving Hamilton jets. We cruise at 28 knots in not quite any conditions, but regularly 28 knots is our cruise speed. The best we could do was about 12 or 15 knots and that was directly towards where the guys had last been seen. So we actually it was almost like a yacht we tacked, so we actually put the weather on our starboard quarter forward, quarter, just so we managed to get up to about 15 or 16 knots and then had to come back in and sort of make our way that way, but religiously, every half hour. How's everything going? This is going, this is going, that's going, yep.
Speaker 1:While Henry and the crew of Hawke's Bay Coast Guard were assessing the conditions further up the coast, the Whakatane Sport Fishing Club was quite a hive of activity. President of Whakatane Sport Fishing Club, Hayden Johnson, joins us.
Speaker 4:We were preparing for our annual bluefin tuna fishing tournament at the time, and so we were quite aware of what was happening around the country and keeping an eye out on where the fishing was happening and what we were likely to see. We were also aware of some of the boats that were coming from that area that were going to be coming to fish our tournament. So, yeah, we were keeping an eye out, seeing what was happening.
Speaker 1:And when this incident happened. What was it like at the Whakatane Club when it happened? How did you guys react and what was happening?
Speaker 4:Losing any fellow fishers going missing is horrible for all of us, and so there was a lot of concern and a lot of people talking about it, and it brings up a lot of conversations about associated risks with our type of fishing sport fishing that we do as well.
Speaker 1:For sure. So I've heard some stories from other people that they're actually listening to the Coast Guard channel, where they could hear it, or they were watching the flight radar when the rescue was happening. Were any of your club members or yourself doing that?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. This modern technology you've been able to see what's happening with a rescue is quite outstanding, and been able to see the ship tracker, the flight radar, seeing where the rescue helicopters are going, the fixed wings are going. Obviously, we weren't able to be listening in on the side of the coast, but that technology was outstanding to watch.
Speaker 1:Back to Henry Van Teel and the crew of the Coast Guard Hawke's Bay.
Speaker 3:It was getting dark. I think we were within 20 or 30 minutes of sunset. We'd been copying the radio transmissions and so we knew that African tiger had left the scene. And so all of a sudden, there was a couple of factors that was, some extra factors to weigh in, so we knew where the guys had been seen at 1.30 or 13.30. And we also had a lat long for where they were at 15.30, about two hours later. And so I plotted those on our GPS and I had Alex who was on helm, and I said Alex, that's your new go-to Head, straight for that.
Speaker 3:And the best we could do was, I mean, the conditions were getting, I was comfortable, I mean you know it was rough, but I didn't feel at all concerned, and the best speed we could do was eight knots. So that gives you a sense of what had happened. The wind at that stage was 30 to 40. It was an honest three-meter swell with the odd five-meter coming through, and then of course there's the wind waves sitting on top of that. So the best we could do is eight knots. So I could calculate. The best we were going to manage was we'd be on scene by eight o'clock at night and the original position was about eight miles more or less south of Portland. Obviously, the next position was a lot closer to Portland, slash Mahia. At eight o'clock they would have been pretty close to the coast and obviously you know reefs, rocks working in there at nightfall, at nighttime, and we knew the waves were bigger down there and five or six meters. It was just too dangerous. It was like no, this is.
Speaker 3:And so what I did was we actually stopped the boat. The first time we stopped the boat I said look, alex, what do you think? I went around the crew and some said, oh, you know, and in the end the call was mine, but I wanted the crew involved and I think that's you know, even on a recreational boat, I know the skipper is the skipper is the skipper, but if you bring your crew along, it makes the decision making process. You know everybody buys on. And we went through and I said look, we're not going to be there till eight o'clock. All of a sudden, we've gone from a situation where african tiger could look over the side and say they're there and we can go in and pick them up to a search. And we're talking about a search where, all of a sudden. My sweep width if I'm lucky and I'll be really generous 50 metres each side, 100 metres.
Speaker 3:It's like needle in a haystack, needle in hand, working in on a lee shore with rocks and reefs and stuff like that, and it was just too dangerous. If it had been midday and we still had another three or four hours daylight it would have been a different story. Probably we probably would have like I didn't feel unsafe, if that makes sense. I know it was rough, but didn't feel unsafe. It was well within the capability of the crew and the boat.
Speaker 3:But it was that whole nightfall and that whole risk-reward equation as a skipper that you've got to go through. And we turned around and, yeah, it was again going out. We'd rotated the crew every half hour, so everybody had a station helm radar sitting around, you know. And so what we do religiously on these jobs every half hour you rotate a position so you can stay fresh and we did exactly the same on the way home. And yeah, to give you a sense, obviously now you can't see the waves coming. There were times when the wave would just pick up our boat and we'd weigh 11 tons and just move us sideways.
Speaker 1:And real power there and a lot of water moving all at once and I don't think lots of people really understand waves, of waves.
Speaker 3:It's like, yes, but you've got to understand the forces that are sitting in there and the pressure that it's going to put on your boat. And yeah, look, we felt safe. I mean, we didn't feel, oh, my God you know. But yeah, it was a pretty quiet trip home.
Speaker 1:How do you and your team maintain, I guess, morale and motivation? Because you've gone out there to do a job and you've had to turn away from that job and go back. You said it's quiet. I guess you're just thinking a lot about those guys that are still out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you think, oh shit, those poor bastards. You know, I mean we're in a relatively dry because we took some waves over the top and we places where the boat leaks, where we didn't expect it to leak, and stuff like that. But you know, I mean we were in a much, much better position and you just think, oh you poor buggers.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile in Gisborne, roger Faber and the family are waiting together on the ground on the ground.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, by that time we'd pretty much set up a bit of a base down at the fishing club where the family well, the family actually got taken in by the Eastern group, which have a premises down at the port, and the family had gone into this area.
Speaker 2:The police had set up a little bit of a coordination centre and were talking to the family, et cetera, but the family had come over to the club, we were all sort of sitting around listening to radios, watching on AIS, and we were watching that Coast Guard boat head out from Napier down the coast.
Speaker 2:They actually stayed inshore a bit where it was a bit more sheltered, and then tried to get out off Napier. We weren't in contact with them on VHF or anything like that. Yeah, everyone was hoping for the best and unfortunately we did see that Coast Guard boat turn around before it got to the area where the container ship had seen them in and wondered what was going on and shortly after that found out that they'd had to abound in the search for safety reasons, which obviously, yeah, it was very disappointing for everyone waiting in the hope yeah, and I think it wasn't just you guys locally in gisborne, it was the whole country of sport fishers and just general fishers who were watching the flight radar and all these new technology we've got these days that you can actually watch the rescue in action and to see it finish for the night and that Coast Guard boat turn back.
Speaker 1:It was just heartbreaking for a lot of clubs that felt like it was their own club members going through it as well. It really hit home to a lot of people just how this could happen to any one of us.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was definitely a huge thing and we got huge support from all of the new zealand sports fishing clubs in way of, obviously, phone calls, emails etc. And, later on, financial support for the families once the outcome had come to light, etc. Which was great. But, yeah, the technology I think we all downloaded flight radar and the AIS and everything which, yeah, it all gave us a glimmer of hope, but, yeah, just unfortunately didn't have the result that we all wanted.
Speaker 1:So we obviously heard that it ended in tragedy and the guys weren't rescued. How did that sit with your club and your club members hearing that there was so much hope at one stage and then that changed overnight?
Speaker 4:As I say, we were preparing for a winter tournament and so we had a large number of people in the club. The club was basically packed. It was a very sombre affair and people went. They really felt it. When fellow fishers have gone missing doing what we love to do, that's uh, that's very painful and it was. It was amazing to see the camaraderie that came from all of the fishermen. We had fishermen from around New Zealand in our club and everybody's everyone banded together and was supportive, very supportive everyone else.
Speaker 1:So this is what drove a fundraising effort from Whakatane absolutely it.
Speaker 4:It became very clear that everybody wanted to help in what way they could. So as a group, as our committee and as a club, we decided that the best way we could help at that point was to launch a fundraising effort amongst all of the entrants and other fellow members of our fishing club, which raised $20,000, which was fantastic. And we did that in a couple of days and it was awesome to see how everyone was prepared to react and help out in such a horrible circumstance.
Speaker 1:Has that incident changed things at the Whakatane Club? Because you've gone down to Gisborne and you've handed over the cheque, as it was, but you've also learned a bit from what happened there. Has that changed things at the whakatane club?
Speaker 4:it has. We have now implemented new rules. We have a winter tuna tournament coming up shortly and minimum requirements for safety equipment on our on vessels that are to be fishing and, very simply, an epirb is one of those minimum requirements now. So to think you can go fishing without them in this type of environment short daylight hours, relatively high risk fishing of it it's. It's. People are pushing the boundaries here. They're going outside of what would be normal fishing grounds into areas where vhf coverage coverage is limited, if not non-existent no cell phone coverage. So things like e-perbs, be it vessel e-perbs or personal e-perbs, are now mandatory. That that's a minimum requirement for entering one of our tournaments.
Speaker 1:And how was it on the ground for you, coming down from Whakatane with the check, to say, hey look, we've been all affected by this ourselves. And how was it there in Gisborne when?
Speaker 4:you turned up. There was family members there who were very emotional about what had been taking place, what we were doing to offer our support. It was great to be able to offer what we could. There's very little else you can do with it and there's not much else we can offer except for assisting those families through what's a horrible time and doing what the rest of our members were happy to put forward, which was some cash to help them survive and get through that horrible time.
Speaker 1:And, I think, anyone listening to this podcast. All we're hoping for is taking a few moments to think about when it does go bad and what you can do to make sure you do come home safe.
Speaker 4:That's right. That's where the use of an EPIRB or a personal locator beacon is absolutely essential, that the opportunity to get rescued in any mishap at sea is much, greatly increased by that. Just that simple bit of technology. You'll get spotted, there will be a helicopter come looking for you. Your chance of survival are much, much greater.
Speaker 1:Basic technology, what's available to us all now seems to be the key, I feel how does it compare to other rescues you've been involved in, and are there lessons we can learn from this, from from what coast guard experienced on that day? I?
Speaker 3:think for me there was a couple. I mean, look, I'd had I've been in similar, not as extreme as that, but going that way where we chased the boat from the middle of hawk bay all the way to mahi. God help us before we could get the people off it. Um, I think there's a couple of things and, putting aside the life jackets, comms, I mean we've got four radios on board the boat state and radio comms with people on the shore, that's RCCNZ plus our own incident management team. But I think, more importantly, every half an hour, religiously, and we've got what we call a situation report and our boat's tracked so I don't have to tell people where we are. But we know where we are. We know how much fuel we're burning currently. We know how much fuel we've used. We know I go around the crew, are you okay? Are you okay? Go around the crew, check the boat. Is the boat going fine? No issues, engine's running perfectly normal. We've got plenty of fuel.
Speaker 3:And like, not on this job, because I knew we had plenty of range, but on other jobs I have sat there and calculated how much range I've got left. You know, can I get back home? And stuff like that. Yes, I have always managed to get home. But it's that sit rep, and I think it's not something that most fishermen would do. I think it's kind of like let's head out tonight or tomorrow, go for a fish. You had enough, I've had enough, we'll go back home. You know, with the bin is full, but we're religiously every half hour. What's our situation? Are we still safe? Is it getting more challenging and ways out.
Speaker 3:So we had mentally identified look, if it got really bad, can we tuck somewhere into Mahia? You know where can we go? Because we're the same as everybody else, from Gizzy, basically, once you leave the harbour, that's it. There's no safe haven, really, yeah, but we mentally think, you know, could we tuck into Mahia somewhere? I'd spoken to some of the police in Mahia and said what's it like there? What are the conditions? So I had a picture of what was there, so I had an escape route if necessary. Wouldn't have been comfortable.
Speaker 3:But yeah, and I mean we've done tows from 30 or 40 miles offshore and look, we see some quite small. You know, I've been out there and I've towed somebody back that's broken down or whatever. And you look around and you think, really, brother, you're going this far offshore with one out. You know a single outboard and I'm thinking, yeah, but I think you're right, you hit part of it and that is we have a team. So whenever we're doing a job, we've either got police, we've got rccnz, we've got our own incident management team, so we've got an infrastructure that is supporting us. And I think that if smaller recreational boats go, let's build that network within one another.
Speaker 3:Look, and if some of your mates are going home, you know, sometimes the best thing is if they're questioning it, it's kind of like, take that second step. And we've got what we call a SAP process, and I'm also a trainer, so I really beat this into people Stop, assess, plan and then do something. I've got to admit, mike, I'm not a fisherman, but we've got crew that are mad, keen fishers and other people that I know and you can sort of see and it's like I understand the passion, but sometimes you've got to be able to stop and make that hard call. We always wear our PFDs but, equally importantly, inside each of our crew's PFD we've attached a PLB personal locator beacon and then we have a small flashing light, just a normal whistle and stuff like that. So the light is an extra. So if you end up in the water at night there's a little flashy flash, but the PLB is, if you like, the real lifesaver. So that's attached.
Speaker 3:The reason I mention that is look, we attended a boat that overturned here and the guys, they had an EPIRB on board. The boat went over so quickly it had no time to grab it. But if the PLB had either been in their pocket or on themselves, bingo. Similarly, since that was a month ago, literally two or three weeks ago, we attended a yacht fire where the guy did have a plb on him and we were alert. Rccz was alerted literally within minutes. So I personally think if you wear your life jacket, but, equally importantly, personal, located beacons, I mean those, those cheapest chips these days really, you know, you know 300, 400 bucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're filling up the gas to go chase these fish. That kind of cost for a PLB is really nothing and everyone on board should have one right.
Speaker 3:The reason for everybody having their own PLB is. It's really easy to get separated in the water and you know, I mean if you're on your own but the skipper's got the PLB not particularly useful for you. So every crew member has a PLB. Coast Guard in association with you, guys are going to run some seminars around the country. So absolutely, if they're being held in your area, god's sake, turn up. I would say, because there's nothing beats sharing experiences. So I think that would have to be a major plus.
Speaker 3:Look, I'm not going to go in about wearing life jackets and stuff like that, because I think that should be common sense and having a PLB. But I think if there was one thing or a couple of things is do what we do, and that's it like stop, assess, plan. But I think if there was one thing or a couple of things is do what we do, and that's it like stop, assess, plan. And it's like and as I say to my crew, is look, stop, assess, plan is not an excuse for a three-day hooey. Okay, it is not beating the subject to death. It's like you know, if you're doing something at home and it's something big, what's the first thing you do? Sort of like take a deep breath then get into it. It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:So stop and think about it and also understand what your boat can and can't do. So I know, on CK, full noise, I burn 97 litres an hour. I know, at cruise, I burn 80 litres an hour per side. Know, at cruise, I burn 80 litres an hour per side. I know what the boat can do. I know what my range is. I know all of those kinds of things. I know when my next service is due. I know what my gear is about and look, look after your gear, but also engage that thing that's between your ears and you mentioned it as like there's always fishing tomorrow.
Speaker 1:A lot of our listeners would have done a toolbox talk on a site or something like that. So same thing, right?
Speaker 3:It's exactly the same. And I say that to new people at Coast Guard. I say treat this like a workplace. No, we're a bit more exciting than the workplace. But you know, and it's like when you go, health and safety does not go out the door, it is not. Arguably, it is now more critical. You ain't going to walk home If your boat breaks down. You ain't walking home. So do think about safety and it doesn't have to be boring and all the rest of it, but just that short, sharp stuff. And, as I said, look, we debrief everything. We debrief after training and we go around the room and there's only two questions you have to answer what went well? What could we improve? That's a little bit different to sort of like the standard. You know two forms of communication and all the rest of it. I would argue the most important piece of equipment is between your ears and engaging it.
Speaker 1:The funny thing is we do this when we're fishing a lot. We're like, oh, what were the conditions? Like I caught fish on this day. We analyze everything the wind, the swell, the tide. We don't put that in a safety lens. Sometimes it's all about how do we get the fish to bite under those conditions. But maybe we should just, you know, stop like you said and think about how is the safety impaired with those conditions as well, not just where are the fish going to be?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think it's real simple and it's not a big deal. I mean, you know it's like, yeah, and a lot of that stuff can be done. While you're cruising out, you know you're still 200 metres ashore, the boat's idling away, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, just stay in touch with the crew.
Speaker 1:I think in recent years well maybe even in the last decade or so from a sport fishing perspective in particular, chasing these pelagic fish like marlin and tuna the boats used to be a lot larger, like launchers and skippered by professional crew that you would charter to go out and get. Nowadays we'll get a bunch of guys who are tradies or mates or whatever in a small aluminium craft and they're targeting the same fish. I think we need to be wary of that shift in the last decade or so from large boats skippered by professional crew to everyday Kiwis trying to get a bit of the action themselves on their own boat and it's totally understandable.
Speaker 3:I mean it's like everything is becoming much more, you know, like much more in the reach of normal Kiwis, if I can use that term, and it's really. I mean it's really exciting. You know, they see the picture in the paper somebody caught the big fish and it's like that's really cool. I mean, how hard can it be? You know? I mean because most of the time they go out in good weather they don't understand what happens when it turns sand, how bad it can really get. And, as I said, you know, we're both arse and gizzy. I mean there are no islands to tuck in behind.
Speaker 1:You're in the open ocean and these guys were very seasoned fishermen. You know they weren't doing their first time fishing. They'd been fishing plenty of times before and this one caught them out, you know.
Speaker 3:And I mean, and that's why and I'm always really, really careful I don't know the guys, but from all accounts I'm highly experienced but you know, I've been at sea and it's like sometimes, as I said before, shit happens and it's like a wave or something like that, and it's almost like it doesn't matter how experienced you are, something happens and it can have a really sad outcome.
Speaker 1:Finally, Roger, what's changed at Gisborne Tadapuri Club since this incident?
Speaker 2:Yes, a huge amount by a heck of a lot of guys. Now it basically was early on in our bluefin tuna season. It really rocked everybody to the degree that very few people went bluefin tuna fishing. After that we all had a real good look at our safety equipment and our systems on board. Unfortunately, gisborne well, it is a very exposed area. Out off Gisborne We've got no islands, nothing.
Speaker 2:Our Coast Guard did used to run skids during the weekends but they found they weren't getting the support. They didn't have the radio operators and when they did schedule someone on there weren't enough nice days in the weekend to basically warrant someone sitting down there, so they dropped that. So we didn't have an actual coast guard manning a radio in gisborne. We did have a channel which was transferred to tower. I think it is where you could call up and put in a trip report, but it was relatively unused by all the members. It was a huge wake-up call and a lot more people use that now.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned, we all went through our safety gear. The club did actually organise a safety day and a safety evening. We got suppliers of safety equipment to come to the club display all their latest gear that they had, which that was a great success, and a lot of people came through that during the day and then in the evening we had spokesmen from Coast Guard, hutch Wilco and MetService. Chris Bandolino actually came along and spoke to us, which was very educational about how they weather forecast and what they do, because the one thing that came out of it hugely was how come that forecast was so wrong on that particular day and, yeah, that's something that we can't really understand. I still can't understand to this day how come they got it so wrong. But yeah, it's just one of those things. Another thing that came out of it very clearly for me was we've got all these apps that we look at for the forecast and I usually go through windy, swell map and boy weather, but I actually just go on the free ones, like windy, for instance, is only updated every 12 hours. If you go into the free app and just going back to the day that we were out there, one of my other crew members had windy, but they had the paid subscription. Now that gets updated every three hours and they actually looked at the update just before we decided to pull the pin and the updated forecast on windy was showing very similar to what we actually had up near 20 and it had gone from the one at five knots from sort of first thing in the morning and was showing and that sort of made it oh well, okay, this isn't going to drop off, this is what we're getting, so let's pull the pin and go home. So one of the things I did immediately was subscribe to windy to get the update, because when I went back on windy I still had the five knot forecast sitting there and yeah, that was a real learning curve for a lot of people, but it really opened our eyes, and even myself.
Speaker 2:You know, you go and test your EPIRB. Yes, the light comes on and it flashes, but I didn't look at the date and the actual date had expired on it. On my EPIRB we didn't have PLBs at that stage. So the actual suppliers and the local retailers put on some very, very good packages on EPIRBs, plbs, inflatable life jackets, basically all the thing, and I think the whole country basically got on board with those specials and they all sold out of all that gear. I've now put AIS on my boat and, yeah, so well from safety point of view.
Speaker 2:That's probably the one good thing that has come out of it, if you can say, is that it made everyone conscious to have a real good look at their gear and their systems, their debriefs and things they do before they go fishing.
Speaker 2:And everyone you know, even the most experienced guys, said, hey, it's given me a real wake up and yeah, I do things differently now. The other big thing that's really come out of it now is buddy boating, and we in hindsight should have probably kept in touch the three boats a lot more than we did, knowing that conditions weren't the greatest, and found out exactly what plans were of each other and what we were doing. But I think as fishermen and game fishermen, we can all be a little bit secretive at times. We don't want to give away too much and when we got a hot find, a hot bite or something, we want to have that to ourselves for for a while. So we don't tend to share information as much as we should. But definitely now you know if I'm going and I know there's other boats out there and on the water I'm definitely keeping in touch with what we're doing, what our plans are, you know, making sure that we're all hopefully come back safe.
Speaker 1:The one thing I'm thinking about is the VHF black spots and the mobile black spots that are in your backyard. There there's been a bit of a push to get Rocket Lab to put some extended coverage, and what are your thoughts on that? Will that help alleviate some of the issues around Gisbert?
Speaker 2:Yes, most definitely down the area we're in.
Speaker 2:It is marginal for cell phone and also for VHF, and that was probably something that struck at the time with us when we were out there. You know, hey, are they just in one of those marginal areas and they're outside of our VHF channel 60, which is the local channel that we actually all use out of Gisborne, and also in the area where they don't get cell phone coverage. Um, the drive is obviously for those sites to be put in. Rocket lab are out at the end of my year and it's a perfect site for something to be done there and there is quite a cost involved in putting those in and rocket lab have basically said, hey, they're happy to support with giving an area out there where they can be located, but there would need to be some funding found to actually put, especially a cell site or whatever was going to go in there in place.
Speaker 2:There's so many ifs and buts in this incident and, as I mentioned in hindsight, hey, we all wish on the day we'd done things differently and you know, it's just one of those things that will lead us. We all could have done things differently and should have done things differently. But you don't know at the time and you can only look back at it and hopefully learn from it.
Speaker 1:Hayden Johnson talking about Whakatane. Just, they were getting ready for their bluefin tournament when this happened and you know it became very solemn at their club and that's why they decided to, you know, put the buckets around and raise some money for you guys yeah, and that was awesome from their point of view.
Speaker 2:they got twenty thousand dollars together for us and they came over and presented us with that and there were a few of the boats from here. It actually intended to go around and fish that tuna bluefin tuna contest that they were running. As it was, the sea conditions was never going to allow us to get around the cape to get there anyway. So, um, that put pay to it, but the event meant that we weren't going anywhere near the sea for for a time. I know my crew, uh, took quite a few months before they were actually keen to get back on the water and felt comfortable with doing it Myself also.
Speaker 2:It has rocked a lot of us in Gisborne and it's rocked me too. I regularly think about it. To be quite honest, this new season coming up, bluefin season coming up, sort of still pondering whether we should be doing a bluefin sweepstake contest again or not. And, yeah, we've got a committee meeting on Monday and that will be discussed and we'll make a decision on whether to or whether we're not going to. Yeah, well, it was a terrible year last year, you know, there was obviously the angler washed or fell overboard, that drowned off Whakatane also, and then the three down here. I just hope it has opened everyone's eyes and this bluefin fishery is going to be obviously treated a little bit different this coming winter and we don't have any fatalities like we had last season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Coast Guard and New Zealandaland sport fishing council are running eight courses around the country for bluefin tuna, just around safety. There's a bit of information around how to catch them, but there will definitely be a large safety component, like the bar crossing seminars that coast guard ran. So this is all spurred off from what happened in gisborne and you know so there is a bit of silver lining out of those dark clouds that it's actually put organisations into action and said, hey, we need to do better and educate more people just about the risks, because those swells five metre swells, 40 knot winds I just couldn't quickly and that was sort of when the next day when it went round to Southerly and we did have those 40-knot winds and those big swells.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad we weren't out there, to be quite honest. Yeah, it's forecasting is a big one, that you know. I just hope we can get that better too, because that's a big one that we all rely on.
Speaker 1:And when it's wrong, unfortunately, you have incidents like this and yeah, yeah that concludes this episode of the new zealand sport fishing council pod and real podcast. Thank you to maritime new zealand and the safer boating forum for funding this episode. Thank you,