Search for men, aged 75 and 82, continues after overturned boat found in northeastern N.B.

A search for two elderly men continues in northeastern New Brunswick after emergency crews located their small fishing boat overturned Tuesday morning.

Aldéric Thibodeau, 75, and Léandre Thibodeau, 82, were last seen on Monday, around 1 p.m., at the wharf on Robertson Brook Road in Brantville, near Tabusintac, according to the Neguac RCMP.

The brothers went out fishing for mackerel and never returned, according to one of their distant cousins, Réjean Roussel, who assisted in the search from the Neguac wharf on Tuesday afternoon.

Both men have a lot of experience at sea, he said.

"They have already fished lobster, they have already been on big boats," Roussel, who was also a fisherman for many years, said in French.

"They are old fishermen. They know the sea."

"With the wind he had, we lost them, it seems.

"That's fishing."

When the men failed to return by around 9:30 p.m., the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax was contacted, said Isabelle Comeau, spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

A Canadian Armed Forces Cormorant helicopter was assigned to search in Tabusintac Bay, accompanied by the Canadian Coast Guard's search and rescue boat Cap Breton and several auxiliary coast guard vessels, said Comeau.

The Tracadie Fire Department was also called in.

"We left around 9:45 p.m. and we were at sea until around 4:30 a.m.," said Georges St. Coeur, a fisherman who participated in the search.

"The sea was agitated and the waves were pretty strong," he said.

The wind was "treacherous," according to St. Coeur, who has been a fisherman for more than 50 years and has assisted Coast Guard teams for more than 30 years.