“He passed away doing what he loved;” Local fisherman dies at sea
FAIRHOPE, Ala. (WKRG)- Sitting at the Fairhope docks are now a white pick-up truck and an empty slip dock waiting for its fisherman to return.
Mike Bishop and his deckhand, Mark Henderson, set out onto the waters early Saturday morning for the first day of shrimping season. Leaving around 3:00 a.m. to make a three-hour journey to South Mobile Bay.
“You know, he’s a hero, he’s a hero. He let someone live and he went down with his ship,” Bishop’s son, Brandon said.
Just after 3:00 a.m. the Coast Guard believes a waterspout hit Bishop’s boat, “The Old Navy”, causing them to capsize only 10 minutes from their dock.
“The surviving deckhand says the last thing he remembers is my dad handing him a life vest,” Brandon explained. “Telling him to go outside and that was the last time he saw him was up in the wheelhouse.”
Patrick Gormody is another local shrimper and a friend of Mike Bishop; he was out on the water by 4:00 a.m.
“As dark as it was, I know there was no way we could see them but there was a little bit of guilt. Like, if I would’ve looked, I would’ve seen him because we did pass within a few hundred feet of Mikes boat,” Gormody told News 5 over the phone.
Around 8:00 a.m. he received a call from the search party, they sent Gormandy a picture of the sunken boat asking if it belonged to Bishop. He immediately knew it was his friend’s boat and drew up his nets, making the hour-long journey to the “Old Navy”.
“We saw something pop up kind of a ways right off our bow,” Gormandy said. “So, I told the crewman look this way look this way, and they put the binoculars up and we all started screaming that it was a human.”
Who they found was deckhand, Mark Henderson. Gormandy tells News 5 that Henderson was purple and shaking from treading the water for at least 6 hours.
Daphne Search and Rescue found Bishop dead inside of his sunken boat hours later.
“He passed away doing what he loved,” Brandon said.
Bishop is remembered as a hard-working shrimper who would spend hours out on his boat.
“Mike was a salty pirate he had no fear,” Gormandy said. “His personality was kind and caring but he was a fierce competitor when it came to shrimping.”
Now, the salty pirate’s slip dock remains empty, just like the space in the hearts of Bishop’s family and friends.
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