Unless a vessel itself is in distress and at risk of going down no one is going to have a survival suit on assuming they even have them on board. You wonder how someone is left on deck by themselves without any other person on watch. I assume some of these boats run with just two crew members and while one operates the vessel the guy on deck is on his own. The brutal reality is being out on a boat in pitching seas or even flat seas for that matter can turn bad quickly. All it takes is one slip and your life can change in an instant. I have a friend who knows of an incident involving his friend some ten years ago. They were either on there way out or coming back from the Hudson. One of the guys, actually the owner, went on deck to have a smoke. Someone else was running the boat. About a half hour later someone asked where he was and he wasn't on board. They turned the boat around, retraced their course backwards and amazingly found him floating in the water. The boat traveled so far from where the guy went over that when they got him back on board he told them the lights from the boat disappeared on the horizon. That's how far they traveled before anyone realized what had happened. It was a miracle at night with tides and everything else they were able to circle back and find the guy and it ended up he just lost his balance and fell overboard. No one should be on deck alone if it can be avoided especially at night and while running and certainly no crew member should be unaccounted for that long a time frame. It's an accident waiting to happen which 99.9% of the time has a tragic ending.

Sad someone lost their life due to carelessness.

Dakota