Tense wait for decision in fishing boat deaths retrial

By GREGG WYCHERLEY

The fishing industry is waiting with interest for a decision in the retrial of a boat owner who was prosecuted after three men died when his boat sank.

Mark James Mathers was convicted last March for causing or permitting the boat to be operated in a manner which caused unnecessary danger to others.

He was ordered to pay $8000, to be split between the victims' families and the sole survivor of the 1998 sinking of the 10.5m fishing boat Hunter II.

Mathers was also convicted of operating a vessel without holding a Safe Ship Management Certificate and fined a further $2500.

But last June an Appeal Court judgment overturned the conviction on the charge of causing or permitting a boat to be operated in a manner which caused unnecessary danger to others.

The Appeal Court found that original trial judge Neil McLean had misdirected the jury on the law and ordered a new trial, which began in the Hamilton District Court on Monday.

The trial, this time without a jury, concluded yesterday and after hearing three days of evidence Judge Phillip Cooper reserved his decision for a fortnight.

Mathers' conviction, and its subsequent overturning, sent shockwaves through the fishing industry, raising the question of whether the verdict shifted responsibility for safety at sea from the skipper of a vessel to its owner, even if the owner was not on board.

The 10m trawler capsized and sank off Tirua Pt, south of Raglan, on September 18, 1998.

Those drowned were skipper Jeremy Gray, 27, his brother Shane, 18, and their 17-year-old cousin Cory Maniapoto.

Glyn Rees was the only survivor.

The court heard that the vessel had dragged its grapnel anchor, which had been damaged in a previous incident, and was of a type not recommended for use on the mud seafloor found around Raglan.

It was agreed that the boat left Raglan in an unsafe condition without a dedicated anchor.

Mathers told the court he had ordered a new anchor to replace the original, which had been lost on an earlier trip, and had relied on the skipper to use one of at least four other suitable anchors on board in its absence.

But prosecutor Ross Douch argued that the other anchors on board were normally used only as net anchors and Mathers was negligent in allowing the boat to leave port without supplying a new dedicated anchor, or discussing alternative anchoring arrangements with the skipper.

The judge must decide whether it was the owner's responsibility to ensure that the boat was not allowed to sail without a dedicated anchor secured to the anchor warp, or whether he could have reasonably assumed that the skipper would use one of the other anchors on the boat.

nzherald.co.nz/marine