A fisherman dies in the winch of a shrimping vessel operating out of Tarpon Springs.
By NORA KOCH
Published February 25, 2004
TARPON SPRINGS - The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the death of a 39-year-old fisherman who was killed this month on a shrimp boat out of Tarpon Springs.
While pulling in nets of shrimp, Michael F. Cassidy got tangled in the cable winch system aboard the Captain Ken in the gulf waters near Key West on Feb. 1, according to the Coast Guard. Cassidy was pulled into the winch, where he died, officials said.
This trip was supposed to be one of Cassidy's last, said his father, Richard Cassidy of Tarpon Springs. A father of two boys, Christopher, 17, and Jesse, 15, Cassidy had wanted to get off the boats to spend more time with his family. He is divorced from his wife, Sonja Bowers.
He'd been a fisherman since his teenage years in the Florida Keys and took up the shrimping life when he was 20 years old, spending weeks at a time at sea, Richard Cassidy said.
The boat, owned by John Williams of Tarpon Springs, departed from the Tarpon docks on Jan. 20, according to the Coast Guard, which routinely investigates deaths on commercial vessels. Cassidy and his brother Cass, 34, were on the boat, which was captained by the boat owner's son, Adam Williams. Each of men declined to comment for this story.
At 12:49 a.m. on Feb. 1, the Coast Guard received a report that a crew member had become entangled in the winch, said Petty Officer Ryan Doss of the Coast Guard's public affairs office in Miami.
Nine minutes after the call was received, the Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter from a station north of Miami to the shrimp boat, which was about 35 miles off Key West. When the helicopter arrived at 3:37 a.m., rescuers attempted to lower a swimmer to the boat, but because the rigging of the Captain Ken was still in the water, the swimmer could possibly have become entangled, Doss said. Instead, the helicopter called for a Coast Guard utility boat from the Marine Safety Detachment in Marathon.
When the boat arrived at 6:55 a.m., an emergency medical technician got aboard and determined that Cassidy did not have a pulse and was not breathing, Doss said. The EMT also determined that rescuers would not be able to remove him from the winch without tools that were not available on the rescue boat.
The Captain Ken then traveled to the harbor, where members of the Key West Fire Department spent four hours extricating the body.
After the accident, the Coast Guard inspected the boat, and ordered it to stay in port until a list of repairs were made. The Coast Guard was not able to provide a list of the inspection's findings on Tuesday.
Owner John Williams said the list included minor items such as burned-out lights, a dead battery and a defective oil filter, all which were fixed within a few days and did not contribute to the accident.
Williams called Cassidy's death a "freak accident."
"There's no explanation, there's nothing," said the lifelong shrimper, a co-owner of the Northside Seafood Market and Gulf Partners Ltd., a shrimp-processing dock, both in Tarpon Springs. "It's just a terrible accident."
Williams, who also is a regional leader in the Southern Shrimp Alliance, which is petitioning the federal government to aid domestic shrimpers, owns three shrimp boats. Each boat makes at least a dozen two-to-three week shrimping trips a year, and returns to Tarpon Springs with its catch. Since he started making shrimp trips on his own boats in the mid 1970s, Williams said, there has never been an injury or death aboard one of his boats.
Meanwhile, Cassidy's family, including his parents, five brothers and a sister, is struggling to deal with the loss of the the gregarious middle brother who died while doing what he enjoyed all his life.
"He loved the water, the ocean, he knew everything - all the names of all the fish," said Richard Cassidy. "He was very good at what he did and he enjoyed it."
His mother, Lee Cassidy, remembered Tuesday how Michael would save exotic shells that came up in the shrimp nets, and bring them back home for her.
A fundraiser at Sloppy Joe's in Key West on Monday raised more than $6,000 to help with expenses for Cassidy's two teenage sons. Local musicians, including Cassidy's brother, Terry, donated the day's tips, and the restaurant also chipped in.
On May 4, after a 9 a.m. Mass at St. Peter's Catholic Church on Big Pine Key, the family's longtime parish, they will spread Cassidy's ashes at sea, Richard Cassidy said.
