New Jersey Scuba Diving

Boat Crewman Dies in Sea And Three Men Are Missing

By Andy Newman
New York Times
Jan. 7, 1999

A crew member of a clamming boat died and three men were missing last night when their 84-foot boat foundered in rough seas and sank in the Atlantic 13 miles off Manasquan, N.J., the Coast Guard said.

One of the vessel's owners, Daniel LaVecchia, said the boat, the Beth Dee Bob, appeared to have been swamped by 8- to 10-foot waves so vicious that a Coast Guard rescue boat had to turn back.

"They were taking water over the bow," said Mr. LaVecchia, a co-owner of P.M.D. Enterprises in Cape May, N.J. "If that happens and water gets down into the tanks, once it starts to list it won't recover."

The Coast Guard received a distress call from the boat around 6 P.M. An hour later, the crew member, Jay Bjornestadt, 38, was found by a Coast Guard helicopter, floating in a life preserver and alive but unconscious. He died at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune two hours later, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Although Coast Guard rescue teams were to continue searching throughout today, Lieut. John Brenner of the Coast Guard's Atlantic City Group said that with water temperatures in the 40's and barely any debris visible on the water, the outlook for the other three crew members was not bright.

"He was in the water for an hour," Lieutenant Brenner said of Mr. Bjornestadt, "and that was definitely too much for him."

The Beth Dee Bob left Point Pleasant, N.J., about 50 miles south of New York City, sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday for a 24-hour trip to dredge for ocean quahogs, a large species of clam usually canned or processed into breaded clam strips, Mr. LaVecchia said.

After an uneventful trip to an area somewhere between 15 and 30 miles out, the Beth Dee Bob was returning home when the seas grew rough, Mr. LaVecchia said. Neither he nor the Coast Guard knew what caused the high winds -- more than 30 knots -- and rough seas off Manasquan.

"Sometimes it just happens that you get a little more wind out on the water," Mr. Brenner said.

After the Coast Guard got the distress call, followed by a message relayed from one of P.M.D.'s two other boats that the Beth Dee Bob was taking on water, the Coast Guard dispatched a 41-foot rescue boat from its station in Manasquan and a helicopter from Atlantic City, Lieutenant Brenner said.

When the helicopter spotted Mr. Bjornestadt, floating and holding a strobe light, a swimmer was lowered into the water and wrestled him into a rescue basket.

An empty liferaft floated nearby.

"It looks like they just couldn't get in their survival equipment fast enough," Mr. LaVecchia said.

Mr. LaVecchia said that the crew of the Beth Dee Bob were all experienced seamen and that the captain had piloted the boat for more than five years.

"These are seasoned guys," he said. Six or seven other boats, he said, including P.M.D.'s Danielle Maria, were on the water helping the Coast Guard search through the night.

"These guys are friends and soulmates," he said. "I mean, they're fishermen."

Surf clams and the larger ocean quahogs are the New Jersey fishing industry's largest cash crop, netting $27 million in 1996. Quahogs can be up to 10 inches wide, and are sold exclusively to a half-dozen regional seafood processing companies that use them in canned chowders.

The job of clamming has become much safer and more lucrative than it once was. An agreement between the clamming industry and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates commercial fishing within 200 miles of coastal waters, set a quota system for clamming, and, by allowing quotas to be transferred or sold, has shrunk the industry to about a dozen clammers from a peak of more than 100.

But controlling the waters remains out of reach of any man or institution, and fishing boats have gone down off the New Jersey coastline before. In 1995, three men were rescued off Sandy Hook after their 74-foot boat sank after being swamped in 6-foot waves driven by 25-knot winds.

And in 1983, at least five fishermen died in two separate incidents when their boats - one 65 feet long, one 80 feet - sank off Cape May and the Manasquan Inlet, respectively.

Mr. LaVecchia said that P.M.D., a small company with its own clam-processing plant, had never lost a boat.

"We had three boats," he said. "Now we have two. It's awful."