HUMBOLDT BAY, Calif. — Down, down, down the robotic rover descended into the Pacific Ocean's cold-hearted depths, searching for signs of a 46-foot commercial fishing vessel that had gone missing.
Veteran captain Bill Burchell and his two crewmen aboard the trawler Marian Ann vanished one evening in late September as the trio worked the long nets they used to scour for rock cod 40 miles northwest of this scenic fishing port.
With all three men presumed lost at sea, U.S. Coast Guard investigators in December dispatched the submersible on a longshot search for clues to the ship's fate.
Aboard a U.S. Navy search vessel, they huddled over a computer screen that displayed the robot's-eye view of the ocean below. Slowly, in the gloom at 2,106 feet, as sinewy squid darted from view, a boat's murky form came into focus -- first the towering mast, then the hull beneath it on the sea floor.
The camera focused on the name painted on the port bow.
Marian Ann, it read clearly.
"Seeing that name just took your breath away," recalled Burchell's 42-year-old wife, Suzie Howser, who reviewed the footage later.
"Before that, you imagined they might be drifting, lost, caught in the currents, heading toward Hawaii -- all the images you use to keep up hope they might still be alive. Then you see the video."
Commercial fishing ranks among the deadliest professions in America, with a fatality rate typically five times higher than that of police officers and firefighters. Between 1992 and 2002, more than 630 commercial fishermen died on the job, according to Coast Guard statistics.
As with the crew of the Marian Ann, many lost fishermen are never found. The solitary nature of the enterprise means there are rarely witnesses, and physical clues often sink with the ship.
In this case, the vessel was located. But the discovery, in some ways, deepened the mystery.
The robot found the Marian Ann sitting upright and apparently undamaged, looking, as Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Richard Loster said, "like someone reached down and delicately placed it on the ocean floor."
Why was Burchell, a stickler for safety, unable to rely on such sophisticated equipment as an automatic distress beacon? With cellphones and a radio, why didn't the crew send a mayday? And why was the ship's life raft found floating un-deployed, still in its canister?
