The disappearance of two scallop fishermen this past week when their boat sank off Trescott has been a painful reminder for some in Maine’s fishing community of previous lives that have been lost at sea.
Commercial fishing consistently ranks among the most dangerous jobs in the world, but fishing in Maine has long been a major part of the state’s economy, with many communities dependent on it for their livelihoods.
When a fishing boat goes missing off Maine’s coast, harbors often grow quiet as locals think about prior deaths and wonder if another life has been taken.
“Every time we heard the search helicopter, it was very traumatic, very scary,” Shelly Tinker, a Lubec resident who spearheaded the creation of a lost fishermen’s memorial in her hometown, said about prior sinkings. “And we heard them again a few days ago.”
The search last weekend was for Chester Barrett and his son Aaron Barrett, two Addison fishermen who were moving their scallop dragger from Cobscook Bay, which had been closed for the season, back to their home port. Their 34-foot boat, Sudden Impact, was reported to the U.S. Coast Guard as overdue back in South Addison on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 18.
The duo encountered rough seas during the trip and texted a friend that they planned to seek shelter in Cutler, but they never made it back to shore. After days of searching by the Coast Guard, Maine Marine Patrol and private fishermen, state officials confirmed Thursday that the boat had sunk in 160 feet of water off Moose Cove in Trescott.
A remotely operated submersible equipped with a camera found the wreckage on the bottom, as well a body that searchers believe may belong to one of the men. What may have happened to the other is unknown.
Tinker did not know Chester or Aaron Barrett but said she knows the anguish that a boat sinking can cause.
She said Loren Lank, a fisherman who died in 2009 while dragging for urchins in Cobscook Bay, was her close neighbor. Her husband, who now works in aquaculture, was a scallop fisherman for many years, and she would worry about something similar happening to him, especially when he took their children out.
When Lank’s boat sank, his deckhand, 19-year-old Logan Preston, also died but his remains weren’t found for nearly a year.
While deaths on land usually are quickly explained by witnesses or physical evidence, it can take weeks or even months to learn what happened or to recover the remains of a loved one lost at sea — though often searchers never find either a body or an explanation.
The loss of Lank’s boat occurred during a 13-month stretch in Washington County when three boats sank and seven fishermen died, though three other people survived one of the sinkings. Tinker said that when a boat and fishermen disappear, friends and family feel compelled to go look, even though they know it is likely too late.
“We all take to the beaches and call their names,” she said. “I struggle. I cry. We were good friends with Loren.”
On Thursday — the same day state officials confirmed that the Sudden Impact had sunk off Trescott — the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association noted the loss of two other fishermen off southern Maine in 2020.
“Five years ago today, Joe Nickerson and Chris Pinkham were tragically lost when the F/V Hayley Ann capsized while fishing — a devastating reminder of the risks fishermen face every day to provide for their families and land amazing local seafood for the rest of us,” the association posted on Instagram.
Nickerson was chairman of the board at the association and, among other things, advocated for improving fishermen safety, officials have said.
“Our hearts are especially heavy as the search continues for Chester and Aaron Barrett,” MCFA officials wrote on the Instagram post. “These tragedies remind us of the incredible courage it takes to step onto a boat, face the unknown, and do the work that sustains so many of us.”
The association quoted a passage from the Bible in memorializing the dead men.
“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep,” the quote reads.
Paul Molyneaux, a journalist and former commercial fisherman who crewed on boats in both midcoast and Down East Maine, said that any sinking reverberates along the whole coast because of the daily risks that fishermen face.
“We all feel it when we hear of a boat going down and knowing people could be in the water taking their last breaths,” Molyneaux said Friday. “We know it could be us, and most people who work on the water have stories of close calls.”
Molyneaux recalled that one fisherman he used to work with, James Weaver of Thomaston, drowned in 2006 when a groundfishing boat capsized in the Gulf of Maine.
He also noted that if the Barretts’ boat had been two feet longer, they would have been required to have a life raft on board — which he said might have given them a “ghost of a chance” for surviving.
“Whatever happened, it happened fast,” Molyneaux said. “The currents along that stretch of the coast are very strong, and in 9-foot seas, who knows?”
Tinker said it was the painful loss of her neighbor that drove her to raise funds for and establish the Lost Fishermen’s Memorial in Lubec.
Made from pieces of granite carved to look like ocean waves, the waterfront memorial now has etched into it the names of more than 100 fishermen who have died along the Down East coast or just across the Canadian border.
The list has names that date back as far as the early 1900s, she said, and was updated in 2023 to add that of Tylar Michaud, an 18-year old lobsterman from Steuben who drowned in July of that year, most likely after getting caught in his fishing gear and dragged overboard.
“We’re hoping people can find some peace, knowing their loved ones’ names are there forever,” Tinker said. “They are not forgotten.”
