The three boaters found unresponsive near an overturned fishing boat off the Massachusetts coast Thursday have been pronounced dead and identified, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Friday.
The search for a fourth missing boater was suspended earlier in the day.
The three men who died were identified as Jia Fu Zheng, 38, and Daxiao Lin, 43, of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Jaime Liu, 42, of Litchfield, New Hampshire. The man who remains missing is Bin “Michael” Cai, the Coast Guard said.
The three people who were found in the water off Cape Ann were initially described as unresponsive. The Coast Guard said they'd left Hampton in southern New Hampshire Wednesday morning in a 17-foot boat, headed for the fishing grounds near Jeffreys Ledge, which is about 50 miles from shore.
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The search for the fourth boater was suspended just before noon Friday, the Coast Guard said, noting that the 27-hour search had covered more than 1,567 square nautical miles — an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.
Locals say the waters can be dangerous for a small boat and that conditions over the last few days were choppy.
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"It is not the type of the ocean you should be in a small boat right now, it hasn't been very comfortable the last two days," said Randy Campolini, a lobsterman who comes out of Hampton.
Local fishermen in Hampton say the ocean has been rough the past few days, and that they were surprised to see the 17-footer head out Wednesday morning.
"It just looked like they were just getting ready, putting some rods on the boat. We were leaving the harbor on our charter and just saw them on the dock," recalled Rick LaPierre, a charter boat captain. "Even an experienced angler -- I've been on the ocean for 45 years, and there's nothing I could do in a small boat like that."
"The reality is it's very dangerous to be out there in April in a small boat, because you don't have the life rafts, you don't have survival suits," said Phil Eastman, owner of Eastman's Fishing Fleet. "You can't survive in that temperature … Very, very sad, because great people are going out to catch fish, and they're having a great time, but they don't realize the dangers this time of year."
The Coast Guard had a helicopter, airplane, two cutters and three Coast Guard stations involved in their search Thursday. One vessel was still searching Friday.
Anyone with information that could help with the search is asked to call Sector Northern New England at (207) 767-0303.
Cape Ann is a rocky peninsula in northeastern Massachusetts on the Atlantic Ocean. It is about 30 miles northeast of Boston and marks the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay.
