A man and a woman were in cardiac arrest after apparently falling from a fishing boat into the sea off Kitaibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture, on the morning of November 7, the Japan Coast Guard said.
A passerby called 110 at about 8:50 a.m. to report that people had fallen from a fishing boat into the water near the coast in the Nakago district of the city. Three people were aboard: the skipper, a 91-year-old man, his 58-year-old son and his 56-year-old daughter. All three were rescued, but the son and daughter were in cardiac arrest.
The boat was the Toyofukumaru, a 4.9-ton small fishing vessel belonging to the local Otsu fisheries cooperative, according to the coast guard and the cooperative. The son and daughter are believed to have fallen into the sea.
By the time rescuers arrived, the boat had run aground on a sandy beach near the scene and all three people had already been pulled from the water, according to the coast guard and Ibaraki prefectural police. The coast guard is investigating how the two came to be in the water.
The ages of those aboard point to a question that has come up before in Japanese coastal fishing: how small crews are vetted and supervised, and who is watching the water when the person at the helm is elderly. The coast guard has not said who was steering the Toyofukumaru at the time, or how the vessel came to be near the shore.