By Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press
One of the last dives of the late shipwreck hunter Joe Mazraani of Millstone Township, NJ, was to the steam trawler Seiner, a fishing vessel that disappeared in the fishing grounds of Georges Bank off Rhode Island in January 1929.
The vessel had been lost for 95 years before the team from the dive boat Tenacious, led by Mazraani and Eric Takakjian of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, discovered the wreck site in 2022 using side scan sonar. They returned on July 27 and 28 of this summer and positively identified the wreck.
However, Mazraani did not have long to celebrate the find. Just two short days later, he died while identifying a second wreck in the Georges Bank, said Jennifer Silletti, Mazraani’s partner in life and in the Atlantic Wreck Salvage Co. and Tenacious dive boat. The business and boat are based out of Point Pleasant Beach, NJ.
The Seiner left from New London, Connecticut, on Jan. 9, 1929, and was last heard from on the 18th when her captain, Thomas Miller, made a required daily report to the vessel’s owner, Portland Trawling Co.
See underwater images of the wreck of the Seiner
Concerns grew when Seiner failed to make her Jan. 19 report and again when she missed her scheduled return to port on Jan. 22. It’s believed that the vessel foundered in a storm. Her entire crew of 21 men went down with the ship.
When the ship went missing, a concerted effort was made to find it. The Portland Trawling Co. and the United States Coast Guard mounted a search and rescue mission that involved private fishing vessels, 12 patrol boats, and two destroyers. They found no survivors
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