A commercial fishing vessel, the 72-foot Lily Jean, sank off the coast of Massachusetts on Saturday, leaving six crew members and one NOAA fishery observer presumed dead.
The United States Coast Guard received a distress beacon around 7 a.m. and launched an emergency response. When rescuers arrived, they found a debris field, an empty life raft, and one person in the water who was later confirmed dead. The remaining six aboard the vessel were not found.
The boat’s captain, Gus Sanfilippo, a fifth-generation fisherman from Gloucester, had previously appeared in a 2012 episode of Nor’Easter Men, which highlighted the dangers of commercial fishing.
Search efforts continued in extremely harsh conditions, including freezing spray, high winds, and rough seas, as a nor’easter moved toward the region.
The NOAA confirmed that a federally contracted fishery observer was also aboard the vessel at the time of the incident.