Tragedy in Tampa Bay

[John R]

Agree - and an inexpensive license/certificate of sorts, PROPERLY initiated (the hard part) might be good too.

But that is the same problem with most saltwater fishing licenses, they are never properly initiated and maintained...

[fisabel]

Look like that the only way of communication from the 4 fisherman was a cell phone that one of then was carrying, but he forget the phone in the front seat of the truck that was used to tow the boat to the ramp.

Here some quoates from a local paper ( from a relative):

"Gomez's nephew, Faustino Dominguez Jr., and his wife, Dore, both 23, went fishing Saturday about noon, leaving from the same boat ramp used by his uncle an hour earlier. Not knowing the men were missing, they decided to head home early, about 3 p.m., because of choppy seas and high winds.

"When the wind peaked, there were 3-foot seas in the bay," Dominguez said. "From what I saw of (Gonzalez's) boat, it wasn't made for that kind of weather."

Dominguez said Gonzalez bought and sold boats regularly. He said he occasionally helped Gonzalez repair the boats. But Gonzalez wasn't very experienced at operating them, he said.

The boat the men went out in Saturday, "was a small boat and very, very low to the water," said Dominguez. "