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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 5
January 2007
Lucky to be alive, fisherman tells his story
The morning of Oct. 31 started off just like any other fishing day for Rye, NH lobsterman Jason Lemos. As he set out aboard his boat to haul traps, he had no idea that a small slip of the hand would change everything and almost cost him his life.
The 32-year-old Lemos learned a few hard but important lessons that he wants to pass on in hopes that the lobstermen reading his story won’t make the same mistakes he did.
Lemos declined to make public the name of his rescuer out of respect for his privacy. Here is Jason Lemos’ story as told to CFN. —Editor
I want to speak to the lobstermen who go out fishing and haul traps alone and who don’t have a second set of eyes on the boat. You all hear the stories of people going over and never think it’s going to happen to you. Well it happened to me. I want to tell this story because I hope it might some day save a life.
I grew up in a large Italian fishing family on the Portsmouth, NH seacoast. My grandfather Joseph Marconi was a lobsterman his whole life, and all of his brothers fished.
My grandparents ran a small local grocery store for many years that sold live lobsters and lobster rolls. My grandfather and his brothers all passed on the tradition of lobstering to the family, and it is still being passed down through the generations.
I grew up on lobster boats and love being out on them. I always knew it was something I wanted to do.
A nice day
On Tuesday, Oct. 31, I went out lobster fishing. It was a nice day. After a weekend of windstorms and rain that kept everyone in port, this was the first good day anyone had to get out fishing and go through their gear and straighten pots.
I got up about 6 am, made a lunch, grabbed my gear, and drove from Rye into Portsmouth where my boat is docked off the family wharf on Shapleigh Island on the Piscataqua River. I loaded the bait on the boat and steamed up the back channel through Little Harbor, passing by Wentworth Marina, and out through the break wall. It was a cool, sunny morning and seas were flat calm.
I fish eight-trap trawls out of my 26' Duffy, NANCYJOE, and I started in hauling my traps along Wallis Sands Beach in Rye. Because of the storm from the prior weekend, I spent the morning straightening out this gear as some of these pots where pretty well tangled up. After that, I steamed out to haul the gear I had off a ways. I was now situated on the “Lights & Range” along the Maine-New Hampshire line between the Gunboat Shoal Buoy and the Isles of Shoals.
I started in hauling and came upon the trawl marked #17. I hauled it aboard, baited each trap as it came up, and then placed the trap along my trawl table. Any legal bugs that I caught went into my orange basket for banding after the trawl was set back. The trawl table goes across the stern, hanging inside and up the port side of the boat. It accommodates seven traps, and I push off trap eight from the hauling station.
Setting back
My cousin Aaron Marconi was fishing in the same area, and I could see his boat about a half-mile away from me. I called him on the Nextel walkie-talkie phone just to touch base and see how many more he had to haul. We told each other we would catch up with one another before we steamed in.
After that conversation, I brought the boat around to set back this trawl and lined up on my numbers where I had had it. Just as I had done many times before, I pushed off the first trap and began to set back the trawl. The boat was in gear and idling as I set the trawl off the boat.
As the last trap went overboard, I picked up the end line rope coil and trawl buoy off my engine box. I went into motion to throw this overboard but the way I picked it up with my blue rubber gloves, it wrapped around and snagged the pointer finger and thumb on my right hand.
Before I could even think of pulling the boat out of gear or grabbing one of the knives that I have on the dash of the helm, it yanked me to the stern. It happened so fast I had no time to react.
Fighting for a grip
Once down at the stern, I held on and braced myself by putting my feet up under the trawl table. With the boat in gear at idle going in one direction and the trawl of 3' traps all gone off in the opposite direction, I was being pulled both ways.
Every time I moved around attempting to get the line free from my hand, I lost ground. I wanted the tips of my fingers to come off at this point. I knew if I went in the water I’d be in a bad situation. I held on for about 10 to 15 minutes, fighting with the line and dragging the trawl of eight traps that had gone off.
After that time, I had lost so much ground I was laying flat up on my trawl table with the edge of my feet curled down the edge inside the boat.
Going in
I had to calm myself down. I knew I was going to be pulled in, as I could not hold on any longer. I had thoughts racing through my head, “If I go in the water, I’m going to drown.” I knew I couldn’t panic or I would die.
I went off my trawl table just like so many traps had gone before and into the water. As I went off the table, I attempted to kick my boots off. One came off in the boat. The other I was not able to get off until I hit the water.
I was pulled down with the line but knew in my mind that where I had become entangled was about 5'-10' down from where the buoy sits on the surface.
In the motion of being pulled down, I could all of a sudden feel the line loosen up because the traps had hit the bottom. I was then able to free my right hand, swim to the surface, and gasp for air.
Once I surfaced, I grabbed the trawl buoy and placed it between my legs for flotation. Then I began screaming for help and waving my arms trying to draw attention.
I could see my cousin Aaron on one side of me and another boat on the other side but did not know if either of them saw what had happened. They where both about a half a mile away.
Gear on or off?
At this point I debated whether to struggle and pull off the lobster gear that I had on. I was wearing the Guy Cotten navy fleece jacket with the orange sleeves and my green Grunden oilskins.
I decided not to figuring I needed as much warmth as possible to keep my core body temperature up as long as possible.
I was amazed at how buoyant I was with all this gear on, and how manageable it was to swim with it. All of this gear does not pull you down as all of us may have thought. It helped keep me alive.
Then I realized that the boat had started circling. For a minute, I thought about grabbing on and trying to pull myself back in. But on the second pass, she was coming right at me. I was staring right at the bow of the boat and realized I didn’t want to die by being sucked under by the backwash of the propeller.
I let go of my lobster buoy and started swimming like hell to get away from it. I actually kicked off the hauling station on the starboard side and swam for another lobster trawl buoy that was about 10-12 yards away.
My late grandfather Joseph Marconi always said, “If you fall over, grab a buoy and someone will hopefully see you.”
At this point I was swimming – doing the breast stroke – and the thought raced through my mind that, “I’m not going to make it.” But I just kept on telling myself, “You have to make it.”
I did, and I found out that this other buoy was actually more buoyant than my buoy, as it was made up of two bullet-style buoys back to back. I grabbed it and put it between my legs.
Getting really cold
At this point the cold was really starting to set in and my legs and feet were really numb. I peed to warm up the water around me. I tried yelling and waving my arms again in the hope of drawing attention from anyone.
Then I decided to stop and conserve what energy I had left. I started to pray up to the heavens and ask my grandfather and his brothers for help in getting the attention of my cousin Aaron. I said, “Just tap him on the shoulder and tell him to come and get me.”
When you can see a relative half a mile away and he can’t see that you are in trouble, it’s a terrible thing. I was also thinking of all my family and just telling myself I had to keep holding on for them.
By this time, I was starting to hallucinate a little. Things were going a little hazy and cloudy. I thought, “I need to secure myself to this buoy so that someone can pick me up if I go unconscious.” I thought that I might have a chance even if I did go unconscious and at least someone would recover my body. I knew it was only a matter of time before Aaron was going to come back out towards where I was.
Black smoke
A few minutes after I said that prayer to my grandfather, I was starting to go unconscious, and then I saw this white boat out of the corner of my eye. I started screaming and yelling and waving my arms to draw attention. I gave it everything I had left in me.
I knew that he saw me because he gave her the fuel and a puff of black smoke started coming out of the top of his exhaust stack. He was in a 38' wooden lobster boat and he gunned it over to me.
In his first attempt to get me, he reached down and grabbed me by the jacket. That didn’t work, as all the jacket did was stretch. He then reached over and grabbed me by the belt, gave a count of three, and yanked me up in over the rail into the boat.
I weigh about 160 pounds but with all my clothes and gear soaked I probably weighed twice that. He was all alone in his boat and pulled me in by himself. The first thing I heard him say was, “You’re not light.”
The first thing I asked him to do was to call my cousin Aaron Marconi on the VHF to tell him he got me. He sent me down forward in his cabin where it was warm from the diesel engine, and I started stripping off my clothes. I had been in the water for an hour and a half and, at this point, was hypothermic.
He started steaming me in. We were about five or six miles out. He had it full bore. We were at the Coast Guard station in about 10 minutes.
Serious hypothermia
At the Coast Guard station, they cut my clothes off. I had a core temp of 84°. The New Hampshire Marine Patrol guys were there.
I asked one of them, “Am I going to die?”
He said, “No. You’re just cold. We’re going to warm you up.”
My cousins Aaron and Will got my boat and steamed in full throttle. The word got out on the VHF to all my cousins about what had happened to me. They all dropped what pots they where hauling and began steaming in. They knew I was alive and breathing as they where hearing it all play out on the VHF.
While this was all going on, my cousin Aaron called my grandmother and told her to tell my mother. But the cell phone signal was breaking up so she and my mother didn’t know if I was alive or dead. My mother got to the Coast Guard station just as the ambulance was pulling away. As she turned around to go to the hospital, the Coast Guard guys informed her that I was alive but just really cold.
Stinking up the ER
Pretty soon, all the family showed up in the emergency room in their fishing clothes. They really stunk up the ER. People smelled that and walked right back out of the building. It was sort of funny.
After arriving at the hospital, they blew warm air over my body, with a warming blanket wrapping me up like a mummy.
I didn’t lose or break my fingers. I just pulled the hell out of the tendons. But I had an irregular heartbeat and my whole system was screwed up.
I was some hungry as my body warmed up, and they could not fill me up. I never had a chance to eat the lunch I made. I had planned on breaking it out after that last trawl.
The doctors kept me overnight for observation. They discharged me the next afternoon with the warning that I’d probably feel worse the next few days. I really didn’t, though my voice was horse and I felt like I had swum a marathon.
I was simply amazed that I did not have bruises anywhere on my body other than on the two fingers. After getting discharged, they told me to go home and rest. But I had to go down to the boat and get on board her and reflect.
Lessons learned
I’m back in the boat lobstering, mostly weekends because the season’s winding down. I’m still at it, but since the accident, I’ve got knives all over the boat and have been bringing my brother Jared with me as a helper.
You hear stories about other fishermen getting entangled in lines. I never thought in a million years that I‘d get tangled by two fingers and wind up going overboard into the water.
I now have a knife on my skins, right on the suspender on my chest. This will always be there anytime I go out lobstering. I spent $18 on that knife and the plastic sheath.
If I could tell other fishermen what I learned, it would be go out and buy a knife and put it on your skins. If you fish alone, put a second knife somewhere you can get to it in the stern.
A knife on the dash of the helm is no good to you when you’re at the stern or going over. This small piece of equipment is one of the most important in the arsenal of equipment we use. Whether you fish alone or have a helper, it is worth the money spent and the peace of mind you get to have a knife on your skins to assist you if you need it.
All the rescue personnel and doctors told me the survival rate is about a half-hour or 40 minutes before people go unconscious in 48° water. That gear, the stuff we wear, I’ve got a new-found feeling for it when I put it on. It’s going to keep you warm. It’s a lifesaver.
We must watch out for each other. If you think something’s wrong, go over and investigate it. I’m very grateful to the New Hampshire lobsterman who pulled me aboard and saved my life. So many fishermen are out there fishing alone. We rely on each other. Because of what he did, I had a great Thanksgiving with my family. It will be a long time before I have a bad day.
Finally, if you think, “It will never happen to me,” please think again. I’m one lucky lobsterman.
Jason Lemos
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