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Canberra: A shrimp fisherman who swam 12 hours to shore to raise the alarm after his trawler sank was hailed a hero on Friday.
Michael Williams, 39, arrived at a beach near Byron Bay, late on Wednesday afternoon after a 13-kilometre swim, sparking an air search for two crew mates.
Fellow crewman John Jarrett, 41, was found at sea on Thursday morning clinging to the lid of a fish cooler that had kept him afloat for 30 hours.
The search for skipper Charlie Picton, 40, was called off late on Thursday. Police assume he drowned after clinging for hours to the same lid as Jarrett.
Jarrett's sister, Rosemary Jarrett, said yesterday all three had initially clung to flotsam after their shrimp trawler, Sea Rogue, capsized and sank before dawn on Wednesday off the coast of Ballina, north of Byron Bay, which is 770 kilometres north of Sydney.
The trawler's nets had snagged on a reef, dragging the boat under.
Because the trawler was only one day into a four-day fishing trip, John Jarrett, known as JJ, told his sister they feared a search would not begin for another three days.
"JJ said, 'We'll be out here for at least three days because no one knows we're here,' so brave Michael swam all the way to shore," his sister told Nine Network television outside Ballina District Hospital, where her brother was being treated for exposure.
"He's my hero. He's all our hero," she said.
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