KEY POINTS:
Three Weeks after an Auckland father of three was lost overboard near Queensland, his distraught family say they still don't know what happened to him and are outraged at the way they have been treated.
Mark Ross, 44, fell overboard from the Geo Sounder, a Singapore-based survey vessel, early on August 25.
Speaking exclusively to the Herald on Sunday, his father, Bob Ross, of Waiheke Island, said they were angry the search had been called off after just 12 hours. The family had had little official contact with either Australian authorities or the ship's owners since the day of the accident, and had had a heartbreaking struggle trying to find out what happened, he said.
"Nobody's saying anything ... We have no facts, nothing, it's like we are deliberately being kept in the dark.
"You don't just fall overboard."
Mark, a seaman of 28 years and dad to three children, aged 15, 13 and five, was his only son. Mark had three sisters. "My wife's really cut up about it - she's been walking round the house every day with a bunch of photos bawling her eyes out."
She was now staying with Mark's Brisbane-based sister, Tanea.
A request for Mr Ross to meet crew in Cairns, where the ship was diverted after the accident, was turned down by the ship's Norwegian owners.
"They said it would only add to the anguish. I didn't want to go over there to weep and wail. I just wanted to talk to the blokes on board who were there, to try and put it all together... to find out what the hell happened "
As a long-time seaman himself he had been involved in a number of searches; most continued for at least 48 hours. Why the search for Mark had wound up after just a day was a mystery: "We don't know why they called it off so bloody early.
"Whenever we were called to searches or put on standby, it would be a couple of days at least before you were cleared to go.
"When they lost people in Cook Strait we'd be up and down there for at least two days. It just seems it was such a short time... like they just wrote him off."
The last time Mark's wife, Lisa, saw her husband was the week before their wedding anniversary on August 18. It was seven days after their anniversary when she first heard he was missing.
"The maritime union in Wellington rang me to say they [Australian search and rescue] had been looking for him for three hours. I pretty much knew then, in my heart of hearts, that they wouldn't find him. Mark would have been there if he could have been there," Lisa Ross said.
She had had to ring authorities in Brisbane herself to get more details. While Subsea, the vessel's owners, had given her a brief outline of what happened, neither the company nor the Australian accident bureau were prepared to discuss it further until they had completed accident reports, which could be months away.
In the meantime the couple's three children were devastated, and there were still many unanswered questions.
Mark was an experienced and careful seaman, and she had accompanied him on several overseas trips.
"There is no way in the world I would have thought this could ever have happened." When she asked why divers couldn't be sent to recover her husband's body, she was told none was available.
"And there's a saying that the sea gives up a body after 12 days - why didn't someone go back out then?
"I know it was the middle of nowhere but so what? They knew where he went down..."
Speculation that alcohol had been involved was upsetting. Her husband had recently undergone chemotherapy to treat throat cancer and was unable to drink, she said. "He was in remission - he had been radiated and chemo-ed. Drinking actually made him feel sick. He wouldn't even sit here and have a glass of wine with me, and that was something we used to do before he had cancer."
She ruled out suicide, saying her husband was in good heart.
The loss was made worse by not having a body.
Because her husband had yet to be confirmed dead and there was no death certificate, financial help had been held up. "It's devastating, and it's created all sorts of other problems. Mark was the breadwinner. I have no income, but no one wants to know.
"I have been to Winz, they said it was an accident, go to ACC. ACC said we're trying to do something but we need a death certificate.
"The insurance company is not interested because there is no body.
"I can't take over payments on our car because I don't have a body."
She said Subsea and Mark's colleagues in the maritime union had "pulled together" and offered the family some assistance, "but I don't want that - I don't want pity.
"We are grieving and on top of it I have to think about where I can get a penny to put food on the table. It's very, very distressing."
ACC said families of drowning victims were entitled to the same help as other accident victims, but there could be delays when there was no confirmation of death.
The Story So Far
The Geo Sounder, a survey vessel owned by Norwegian company Subsea and operated by Fugro Survey Private of Singapore, left Tauranga on August 15, with a crew of 13. On board were the Norwegian captain, four Australians and eight New Zealanders, including 44-year-old Aucklander Mark Ross.
It had been doing exploratory work on the Brothers, a hydro-thermal area in the Kermadecs and was being sailed back to Asia by a marine crew when the accident happened 100km north of Willis Island, near the Barrier Reef about 3am on August 25.
When Ross was seen going overboard, life preservers were thrown into the water and a rescue boat launched before the Australian authorities began an air search at dawn, which was called off at nightfall.
The vessel returned to Cairns to get medical treatment for a crewman who had injured an ankle launching the rescue boat, and for the Australian Transport Safety Authority to carry out an accident investigation. Neither it nor the ship's owner, Subsea, were willing to release details of the accident until investigations had been completed. All that is known is the time of the accident, where it happened, that the sea was not rough, and two crew had seen Ross before he went overboard.
The ATSB said its report might take several months.
A company investigation, held at the Norwegian Embassy in Singapore, was expected to wind up this weekend. A representative from the New Zealand High Commission in Singapore was due to attend the inquiry.
