ILES-DE-LA-MADELEINE, Que. – Divers searched the icy waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a missing seal hunter Saturday after they recovered the bodies of three other sealers from a damaged fishing boat that capsized as it was being towed by a coast guard ship.

The 12-metre fishing boat from the Iles-de-la-Madeleine in Quebec, carrying a crew of six, had reported steering problems late Friday north of Cape Breton when the light icebreaker Sir William Alexander took it in tow.

Iles-de-la-Madeleine Mayor Joel Arseneau identified the dead as Bruno Bourque, the boat’s owner and captain, Gilles Leblanc, a hunter in his 50s, and Marc-Andre Deraspe, a hunter in his early 20s.

Arseneau also identified Carl Aucoin as the missing hunter.

“We’re certainly in a state of shock here on the islands,” Arseneau said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“It’s the community as a whole that is mourning the deaths of three or four of our citizens and friends.”

Navy Lt. Lora Collier said two other seal hunters were pulled from the ice-choked water soon after the boat rolled over and were reported in good condition.

Arseneau says Bruno Bourque’s son, Bruno Pierre Bourque, was one of the rescued men.

Four search and rescue technicians recovered the bodies from the boat. Collier said it’s not clear if the missing man was swept overboard.

“The search is continuing,” she said from Halifax.

A Hercules search-and-rescue aircraft and a Cormorant helicopter from 14 Wing Greenwood, N.S., were fanning out along a grid pattern to search for the remaining crewman.

Meanwhile, the disabled fishing boat was secured alongside the 83-metre coast guard vessel, which was headed to Sydney, N.S., when the fishing boat flipped.

Arseneau identified the stricken trawler as the Acadien II.

Sylvette Leblanc of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans said the aluminum Acadien II was built in New Brunswick in 1988. She identified the boat’s owner as Bruno Bourque.

It wasn’t clear what caused the vessel to capsize, but thick ice was reportedly hampering fishing boats as they set out Friday on the opening day of the annual seal hunt.

The two sealers who were rescued were above deck, while the other four men were sleeping below when the boat overturned, Collier said.

Arseneau said he has a lot of questions to ask coast guard officials and expects an investigation. He questioned why sailors remained on their ship while it was towed.

Arseneau said the boat captains were aware conditions were dangerous this year with exceptionally thick, compact ice developed during a long, cold winter.

There is almost an “ice barrier” between the islands and the sealing areas, he said.

A helicopter was expected to pick up the two survivors from the capsized boat and take them back to the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, which is home to about 13,000 people.

The Acadien II was part of a fleet of 16 boats that left the islands for the seal hunt on Wednesday and Thursday.

Arseneau said the hunters have cancelled the rest of their season and the boats are returning home out of solidarity for their fellow hunters.

A veteran sealer in Newfoundland described the incident as unusual but said being towed through thick, packed ice can be “very, very dangerous.”

“There’s certain things you have to watch out for, but I understand that the only way the coast guard would take you in tow would be at your own risk,” Mark Small said in an interview from Wild Cove, N.L.

“They want to help boats get through the ice, but I don’t think they bear the responsibility because these things can happen, and you’re risking your life to go behind an icebreaker.”

Small, who’s been sealing for more than 50 years, said he’s been under tow in the past, and crew members have stayed aboard the vessel while it was being towed.

He speculated ice might have caused the vessel to overturn off Cape Breton.

“There’s always a danger if you’re in thick ice, heavy ice and a pan of ice might come back and go under the longliner and roll her out on her side,” he said.

“I’ve seen that happen. I sort of think that’s what might of happened (in this case.)”

News of the accident quickly spread through the tightly knit community, a collection of a dozen islands about 80 kilometres north of Prince Edward Island’s eastern tip.

“The large family of the islands is in mourning,” Arseneau said.

“It is a tragedy we could never envision. We know we are close to the sea and know it is possible, but we could never imagine that it could happen.”

A man who wouldn’t give his name but answered the phone at a shipbuilding company in the town of Fatima said he heard about the capsizing at 7 a.m.

“It’s very sad,” he said. “A tragedy like that practically touches every family on the islands. It’s a small place, everyone knows each other.”

He speculated that ice may have been a factor in the capsizing.

“There is nothing bizarre in what happened,” he added. “When the ice decides to rise, it will lift up anything. The effect of the ice is extremely strong. It could have happened to this one (vessel) or another one.”

When the hunt opened on Friday, fishermen from the Iles-de-la-Madeleine steamed toward a large herd of seals in the Cabot Strait between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Officials with the federal Fisheries Department confirm the ice is thick this year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where about 92,000 seals can be taken during the first phase of the hunt.

On Friday, three sealing vessels were reported to be struggling in heavy ice off Cape Breton – two taking on some water and the other suffering mechanical problems.

In total, hunters are allowed to take up to 275,000 animals this season, virtually all of them young harp seals. About 70 per cent will be slaughtered next month in a vast area north of Newfoundland known as the Front.

Animal rights activists from the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare were using helicopters to monitor the opening day of the hunt.

Some activists insisted that some sealers didn’t abide by a new regulation intended to make the hunt more humane.

Sealers are to follow a three-step process in killing a seal: striking or shooting the animal, then checking the eye-blink reflex or skull palpitations for signs of life, followed by bleeding the animal by severing arteries under the flippers.

The youngest harp seals, known as whitecoats, cannot be killed until they loose their white fur, which can happen when they are as young as 12 days old.

The Fisheries Department says most of the harp seals taken are about 25 days old.

Amid a increasingly vocal protests overseas, the European Union is considering a ban on all seal products, having outlawed the sale of the white pelts in 1983.