Trawler skipper on cellphone as boat flipped

Mark Sullivan (pictured) survived the trawler flipping, but skipper Ross Irwin is missing. Picture / Sunshine Coast Daily

New Zealander Ross Irwin is missing, feared drowned, off Queensland's Sunshine Coast after the trawler he was steering capsized and sank.

Mr Irwin, aged 49, known locally as "Footy", after the New Zealand cartoon Footrot Flats, was talking to his boss on a mobile phone as the vessel overturned.

The 17m steel-hulled trawler, Lauren G, was lost about 65km northeast of Noosa at 3.52am on Saturday.

Two Sunshine Coast fishermen, 30-year-old Mark Sullivan and a 16-year-old on his first day at sea, were on the rear deck when the trawler overturned. They were thrown into the water but climbed on to the hull of the upturned vessel.

Mr Sullivan tod the Sunshine Coast Daily: "I'm not sure what, but we had seemed to have picked up a really heavy object in the nets and the skipper was on the phone discussing whether to cut the gear free.

"Right at that time, a wave came on board with just enough force to flip us over.

"The wave was only about two metres but it wasn't so much the wave as the swell and being on the angle the boat was on, the swell tends to wash through the boat.

"Because we were attached to something, we just flipped."

He described the next few moments as "a blur" with "everything happening too fast" but said his first concern was for his young crewmate, who was on his maiden fishing voyage.

"I was very concerned for our 16-year-old crew member. It was his first night out," he said.

"It wasn't until the vessel was upside down in the water that we realised that the skipper wasn't anywhere to be seen and we just kept calling out to him.

"But we couldn't see him anywhere. We only had 15 minutes on the upside down vessel, we were hanging on to the keel and then it sank.

"Luckily a life raft popped up and we managed to keep that afloat and get inside that, but we tried to stay as close to the boat as possible in case we spotted the skipper and we just kept calling for him."

Trawler co-owner Iain Nye told Brisbane's Sunday Mail newspaper that Mr Irwin had been asking for help with a snared net, which apparently then flipped the boat in water 100m deep.

Mr Nye said another trawler he owned rushed to the scene, but when it arrived the two deckhands were in the dinghy and the bow of the Lauren G was poking out of the water.

Four helicopters and 12 boats, including the second trawler and water police, scoured the area for any sign of the missing man. Maroochydore police Inspector Tony Lewis said rough conditions hampered the search.

Mr Nye said Mr Irwin often spent up to 20 days at a time at sea: "He's a good bloke, a bloody hard worker and a great dad.

"He loved a beer on a hot day, and if it wasn't hot he'd turn the heater on."

- NZPA, SUNSHINE COAST DAILY