Mother of B.C. charter boat captain tells of heartbreak after deadly sinking

RICHMOND — The heartbroken mother of a young fisherman has identified him as the captain of the charter boat involved in a deadly sinking in B.C. waters last Sunday and says he complained about the disrepair of the vessel.

Ashley Lin said in an emotional interview that her 23-year-old son Chen Ming was among six people missing and feared drowned.

Lin said her son was a very “responsible child” who took care of the whole family. He immigrated from China two years ago.

She said the boat was operated by a company known as Top Fishing in English and Haishang in Chinese.

Lin and Chen’s girlfriend, Hailey Lee, both said in a joint interview in Mandarin that he had complained that a side door was broken on the 30-foot boat that went down in deep waters with 10 people aboard.

Four people were rescued with hypothermia. Police said no one was wearing a life jacket.

Lee said she had seen the damaged door.

Lin, who lives in Richmond, B.C., urged the owner of the charter firm to explain what happened.

“I wish the owner of the charter boat company would come forward to make a statement. You can’t let my son leave the world with so much regret,” she said.

A person who answered the phone to the company this week said they knew nothing about the incident before hanging up.

Lin said she wakes up in the night wondering “whether my son felt cold alone” in the sea.

“I feel I am a very useless mother, that I can’t find my son,” she said.

The RCMP Underwater Recovery Team and West Coast Marine Services are using sonar to search for the charter boat that sank in what police have called “very deep waters” of between 150 and 180 metres.

The investigation into what happened is being led by the Richmond Serious Crimes Unit.

The Canadian Press separately confirmed that Top Fishing was the firm involved. The company was identified by multiple charter operators who focus on the Chinese recreational fishing market, but they did not want to be identified.

Images of the Top Fishing vessel, an aluminum boat made by Kingfisher, also match those shared on social media by Tim Milne, its former owner, when the boat was known as Big Coast.

Milne said his former boat, which he sold more than four years ago through a dealer, was the one that sank.

He said the new owners never updated the boat’s automatic identification system, or AIS, which broadcasts information about a vessel, including its call sign and name, position and speed.

The vessel still bore the name linked to Milne’s ownership, “Big Coast,” when it sank. Milne says he learned of the tragedy when a concerned friend reached out after spotting AIS data that suggested the Big Coast was in distress.

“I was devastated,” Milne said in an interview Thursday. “Losing lives at sea is a worst-case scenario for people in our world.”

Milne said he used the boat without issue for four years.

“It was an awesome boat and extremely dependable,” he said.

He said Transport Canada contacted him last July to let him know Big Coast had been impounded. He received the notification because the AIS was still connected to his contact details.

The agency sent him a snapshot of the boat’s AIS location, and Milne said he noted it was in an illegal fishing area.

He said the boat could take 10 passengers in good conditions, although it’s not something he ever did himself.

But he said the weather conditions at the time of the accident were “tricky,” and multiple weather events could stack up to create brutal conditions.

“We don’t hear of incidents like this on the coast very often. That’s why this is such an anomaly,” Milne said.

“Everybody’s definitely taken aback.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 3, 2026.

— With files by Marissa Birnie in Vancouver

Nono Shen, The Canadian Press