A former dive boat captain was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday on a negligence conviction known as “seaman’s manslaughter” after 34 people were killed in a fire that broke out on his boat in 2019.

Jerry Boylan was found guilty in 2023 of one count of misconduct or neglect of a ship officer for the deaths of 33 passengers and one crew member on the dive boat Conception.

A boat captain who abandoned ship when the dive boat Conception caught fire in 2019, killing 34 people on board, will spend four years in federal prison after being convicted in the criminal case last year.

The captain of a scuba diving boat has been sentenced to four years in prison for criminal negligence nearly five years after 34 people died in a fire aboard his vessel, the Conception, off the California coast.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in prison and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel in 2019.

The captain of a dive boat that caught fire and sank off the California coast in 2019, killing 34 people in one of the state's deadliest maritime disasters, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in prison for his conviction on a federal charge of seaman's manslaughter.

Jerry Boylan could have faced up to 10 years in federal prison for his conviction on what is colloquially called seaman’s manslaughter. The lighter sentence left many of the victims’ family members furious.

The captain of a dive boat has been jailed for four years over the deaths of 34 people in a fire aboard his vessel five years ago in California. Jerry Boylan, 69, was convicted of one count of "seaman's manslaughter" by a jury last year.

The Conception was anchored 25 miles south of Santa Barbara when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 100 feet from shore.