The TV star fisherman who vanished with his crew off the coast of Massachusetts after their boat sank reportedly had a concerning call with his pal – hours before the tragedy on Friday.

Gus Sanfilippo, skipper of the Lily Jean, and six others are presumed dead after their 72-foot fishing vessel capsized when temperatures at sea were a bone-chilling 12 degrees.

Fisherman Sebastian Noto claimed he spoke with Sanfilippo — a fifth-generation commercial fisherman out of Gloucester, Mass. — at around 3 a.m, where the two discussed the outdoor conditions.

“I quit. It’s too cold,” Sanfilippo reportedly told Noto, according to NBC Boston. “He was calm. He just couldn’t do the cold because the air holes were freezing.”

Noto became concerned when there was no sign of Sanfilippo hours later.

“I was about 30 miles east of him. We usually work together all the time. We are like glue man. We give a lot of information back-and-forth,” Noto told the outlet.

A Coast Guard helicopter and boat scrambled to the area where the boat sent a beacon alert distress signal – around 25 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, Mass. This search was suspended on Saturday.

There was no Mayday call from the vessel and around 1,000 square miles were searched, according to Coast Guard officials.

Crews deployed aircraft, cutters and small boats over 24 hours as they battled polar conditions.

“The decision to suspend the search was incredibly difficult,” said Capt. Jamie Frederick, commander of Coast Guard Sector Boston. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all the family members and friends of the lost crew of the Lilly Jean, and with the entire Gloucester community during this heartbreaking time.” 

The cause of the incident is under investigation 

Sanfilippo and his crew on the Lily Jean starred in an episode of “Nor’Easter Men” which aired on the History Channel in 2012. The crew spent days at sea trying to find seafood.

One body has been found and six others are missing, according to WFXT. An empty life raft and debris were also found in the water.

Environmental biology graduate Jada Samitt, 22, was on board the boat, her family told the outlet.

Her devastated aunt Heather Michaels said being at sea was Samitt’s “dream.”

“This is something she loved and put her heart and soul into,” Michaels said.

Vito Giacalone, head of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, said he was left “heartbroken” by the sinking.

“To have that many lives lost all at once, we haven’t seen that in a long time.”

With Post wires

I like Cape Cod Potato Chips — not enough to buy them when they’re not on sale, but they are better than average, and they’re local, or were, until recently.

Most of the production had long since been transferred to free American states, but a vestigial footprint was left behind, in Hyannis. The little factory, which still employed 49 people, used to be a decent-sized tourist attraction.

But as of July, everything’s gone. As the corporate owner, Campbell’s Soup, noted in a press release:

“The site no longer makes economic sense for the business.”

Couldn’t the same thing be said about the entire state of Massachusetts? It no longer makes economic sense.

Or any other kind of sense, for that matter.

The flight last week of Cape Cod chips from Cape Cod was a mere diversion, small potatoes you might say, from the larger pattern of catastrophes here in Massachusetts.

Consider this ongoing cold snap. Just a couple of weeks ago, Gov. Maura Healey made a big announcement. Hydro Quebec had just “flipped a switch,” and now those nice uber-woke Canadians would be providing 25% of the state’s electrical needs, at a savings of $50 million.

Her coven of no-nonsense gals and transitioning beta males began cheering wildly.

Fast forward to last weekend. Hydro Quebec had some, uh, problems, as woke enterprises are wont to do. Plus, global warming took the same weekend off in Canada as it did here. Demand skyrocketed in La Belle Province as temperatures plummeted and output failed.

Guess what happened? The Canadians “flipped a switch” — to off. And Massachusetts was screwed, or would have been, if we hadn’t had fossil fuels to fall back on. Again. Forty percent of our electricity last weekend was generated by… oil.

Not cleaner stuff like natural gas — Maura shut down two pipelines, remember? Or nukes — thanks, Clamshell Alliance!

No, it was oil that saved the day. Oil from free America bailed out the virtue-signaling, totally incompetent Democrats here.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

Then there was wind power, another of Maura’s pet topics. Last week, the wind-power green scam artists were back in federal court, arguing to be permitted to keep squandering billions more on those insane offshore windmills that produce next to no energy, but plenty of pollution.

Do you know how much energy “wind” generated for New England’s hard-pressed electric grid last weekend? According to the Wall Street Journal, less than the burning of wood and garbage.

If wind and solar power are the future, it’s going to be very cold and dark in New England.

You know the old joke.

Q. What did Democrats use for light before candles?

A. Electricity.

Meanwhile, in the political arena, the state continued trying to prevent the feds from arresting and deporting any of the illegal-alien criminals they have welcomed into Massachusetts on full lifetime welfare.

The Democrats claim the federal government has no right to come in and re-impose law and order in the Commonwealth.

Yet simultaneously, the state attorney general went to court to force nine local towns to acquiesce to a crackpot state mandate requiring them to build “public housing,” which is now a euphemism for flooding tranquil working-class communities with hordes of the non-working classes, most of them from the Third World.

So much for insuring domestic tranquility.

This lawsuit against the towns was filed by the attorney general, Andrea Campbell, who has such a commitment to the celebration of diversity that she has fled Boston for the bucolic, 86% white town of Dartmouth on the South Coast.

It’s far outside the confines of the targeted MBTA district. Dartmouth will never be affected by the fundamental transformation of America that Campbell fantasizes will soon be devastating Winthrop, Holden and the rest of the towns.

None of this makes any sense. The state argues that if the feds want to impose control over Taxachusetts, it’s somehow unconstitutional. But if Massachusetts arbitrarily decides to impose its control over the municipalities, it’s totally okay.

This was the nonsense that was going on here last week, just like every week. Maybe that’s why people would rather talk, at least for a moment or two, about defunct potato chip companies.

Nostalgia becomes a recurring theme in failing states — thinking about pleasant things that have vanished because they “no longer make economic sense.”

In Massachusetts, you can play the do-you-remember game with any kind of business sector — candy companies, banks, beer, even the computer companies that were once supposed to be the state’s savior. Digital, Wang, Data General, Prime, etc. All gone.

And now Cape Cod potato chips. These days I mostly grocery-shop at Aldi’s, where the house brand is Clancy’s. They’re made in Canada, which is also where State Line chips come from since the old Wilbraham plant was shuttered.

After the Cape Cod chips announcement, I asked my radio listeners if they remembered other old local brands. The lines lit up.

It’s kind of a sad topic, but not as depressing as talking about how Healey, Campbell et al. are taking a wrecking ball to absolutely everything normal in Massachusetts.

Callers mentioned Tri-Sum and Wachusett — according to their website, those two old rivals are now made “in the Northeast,” which doesn’t sound much like Worcester County. Remember Vincent’s, from Salem, with the witch on the bag or tin?

They brought up brands I’d never heard of — Hunt’s and Blackstone — or recalled only vaguely, like Boyd’s. In New Hampshire, they had Granite State.

I recalled my Aunt Mabel in Portland alternating between King Cole and Humpty Dumpty chips, depending on which brand was on sale at A&P.

And now Cape Cod chips become the latest ghost brand in New England. Maybe they’ll put up a marker at the shuttered factory gates on Breeds Hill Road. It’s a tradition in Massachusetts, just like the other announcement from Cape Cod’s owners last week.

“The company will provide impacted employees guidance on how to assess state assistance programs.”

Welfare — the last thing that makes economic sense for Massachusetts.

The TV star fisherman and his crew who went missing off the coast of Massachusetts after their boat sank in the midst of dangerous winter weather plaguing the East Coast, have been presumed dead.

The search for Capt. Gus Sanfilippo, his crew and a fishery observer from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was called off Saturday, officials said. 

Sanfilippo —- a fifth generation commercial fisherman out of Gloucester, Massachusetts — was featured alongside his crew on the Lily Jean in a 2012 episode of the History Channel show ‘Nor’Easter Men.’

The show documented Sanfilippo and his crew working in dangerous conditions for hours on end, spending as many as 10 days at sea on one fishing trip.

The group, which according to the Daily Mail is now considered lost, was on board the 72-foot boat early Friday when the Coast Guard received a radio beacon alert.

The beacon alert — which is a distress device that transmits a signal via satellites to rescuers when a vessel is in danger — was registered to Sanfilippo’s boat, the Lily Jean.

The Coast Guard issued an emergency alert after not being able to make contact with the crew, and sent a helicopter and boat crew to the location, according to the agency.

Rescuers found one person dead, floating in the water amongst debris and an empty lifeboat when they arrived at the location.

The rest of the crew has not been publicly identified. The Coast Guard did not immediately return a request for comment. 

Coast Guard Commander Timothy Jones, who led the initial search effort, noted that sea spray was freezing on vessels in the area and caused a serious danger to both the missing fishing crew and rescuers.

Search and rescue crews covered around 1,000 square miles of the ocean trying to locate the missing six crew members — using multiple aircraft, cutters and small boats in the 24 hours since the boat fatefully sank, The Associated Press reported.

After consultation between search and rescue mission coordinators and on-scene commanders, the Coast Guard determined on Saturday that all reasonable search efforts for the missing crew members had been exhausted.

Jamie Frederick, the Coast Guard’s Sector Commander, said that the chilling temps, winter conditions and the vast nature of the ocean makes finding survivors at night a difficult task — and even more so with the incoming nor’easter set to hit the East Coast this weekend.

“That is the equivalent of searching for a coconut in the ocean,” Frederick said.

The National Weather Service said that winds at sea were around 27 mph, with waves reaching around four feet high at the time the emergency alert was issued yesterday.

The temperature at sea where the boat sank was 12 degrees — with a water temperature of about 39 degrees.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Friday it was aware that one of their fishery observers — who collected data on board of fishing boats for the government to use to inform regulations — was on board at the time it sank.

Commercial fishing is often cited as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, especially in New England — with winter bringing even more danger from high waves, chilling temps and unpredictable weather patterns.

Vito Giacalone, head of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, warned that deep-sea fishing can be a hazardous and tough living to begin with and that “it’s as safe as the elements and all of the things allow it to be.”

“Gus was a very seasoned experienced fisherman,” Giacalone said, knowing Sanfilippo as a hard worker from a fishing family from his early captain’s days.

Giacalone said that he and the longstanding fishing industry in Gloucester are distraught by the news.

“He did well for himself. I was proud of him,” Giacalone said.

“And now the dock we own, he ties his boat at the dock so we see him every day. He’s been to all my kids’´weddings. That’s how close we were. I feel a sense of loss. A lot of us do.”

Republican State Senator Bruce Tarr — a good friend of Sanfilippo’s — confirmed that seven people were onboard of the boat and was emotional speaking of his missing friend.

“He’s a person that has a big smile, and he gives you a warm embrace when he sees you,’ Tarr said. ‘He is very, very skilled at what he does,” Tarr emotionally said, noting that ‘the fact the vessel now rests at the bottom of the ocean is very hard to understand’ given Sanfilippo’s experience.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy said she was “heartbroken” to hear about the boat’s sinking in a statement.

“I am praying for the crew, and my heart goes out to their loved ones and all Gloucester fishing families during this awful time,” she said.

Everett Sawyer, 55, a close childhood friend of Sanfillippo,said he has known 25 people who have been lost at sea — and noted that dangerous winter conditions can present severe challenges for even the most experienced sailors. 

“Things happen very quickly when you’re out in the ocean,” Sawyer said.  

With Post wires