Boylan

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Conception On August 31, 2019, the Conception—with Captain Boylan, five crew members, and thirty-three passengers— left port for three days of scuba diving near Santa Cruz Island, part of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The Conception was a seventy-five- foot dive boat with three decks: a lower deck with passenger bunks, a main deck with a galley and dining area, and an upper deck with the wheelhouse and crew bunks. One stairway connected the upper deck with the main deck, with another in the galley between the main and lower decks. The lower deck bunk room also had an emergency escape hatch to the main deck galley, but it was difficult to locate without previous knowledge of its existence. While Captain Boylan had more than thirty years’ experience, his five crew

1 Boylan also challenges the jury instructions’ causation requirement and the admission of certain experts’ testimony. We address these claims in a concurrently filed memorandum disposition, in which we affirm.

USA V. BOYLAN

members had little, ranging from almost two years at sea to slightly more than a month. Fires pose extreme dangers for…