Teacher, biologist, nurse: These are some of the victims of the California boat fire

As officials from multiple agencies work to find out what caused Monday morning's tragic boat fire in California, details of the 34 people who were trapped below deck are beginning to emerge.

Five crew members, including the captain, escaped after the Labor Day fire that engulfed the boat named Conception near the island of Santa Cruz during a three-day scuba diving excursion. The vessel sank and overturned, making the recovery of bodies challenging.

Authorities said Wednesday that the bodies of 33 of the 34 presumed dead had been recovered. The count of confirmed deaths came after officials recovered 13 bodies Tuesday, said Coast Guard Lt. Zach Farrell, a spokesman for the interagency joint information center in Santa Barbara representing local, county, state and federal officials involved in the case.

DNA will be needed to identify the victims. Authorities will use the same rapid analysis tool that identified victims of the deadly wildfire that devastated the Northern California town of Paradise last year, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Brown said he heard that those who died ranged from teenagers to people in their 60s.

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Although authorities have yet to release the identities of any of the boat's passengers, many of the victims' families and friends took to social media to mourn the passing of their loved ones.

Kristy Finstad

Kristy Finstad, 41, a marine biologist, led the three-day scuba diving trip off Santa Cruz Island, part of California’s Channel Islands. Finstad owned Worldwide Diving Adventures with her husband, Dan Chua, and had chartered the boat for the tour, her brother Brett Harmeling said in a Facebook post.

She grew up scuba diving with her family and studied marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Thank you all for your unconditional love and support during this incredibly tragic time. My family and I truly appreciate it,” Harmeling wrote Tuesday. “No final word on my sister Kristy; however, it is likely she has transitioned to be with the good Lord.”

Harmeling described her to the Los Angeles Times as extremely strong-willed and adventurous.

“If there was a 1% chance of her making it, she would have made it,” Harmeling said.

Finstad knew the area well, having done hundreds of dives in the Channel Islands, where she first swam with her father as a toddler. She first dived with a tank off Mexico at age 9, according to her company’s website.

Oostburg, Wisconsin, High School Principal Scott Greupink told WISN-TV that Finstad, a 1996 graduate, was an exceptional student.

"There's a little bit of a dark cloud here," he said. "Most of us know the family quite well. Her parents have been involved and very connected to our district. So our hearts just go out to the family."

Finstad studied damselfish and corals in the Tahitian Islands, dove for black pearls in the French Polynesian Tuamotus Islands and counted salmonids for the city of Santa Cruz, where she lived. She did research for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and wrote a restoration guidebook for the California Coastal Commission.

“My mission is to inspire appreciation for our underwater world,” she wrote on her company’s website.

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Family of five

A Stockton, California, mother posted on her Facebook page Tuesday that her three daughters, their father and his wife were among those presumed dead.

Susana Rosas said her daughters Evan, Nicole and Angela Quitasol were on the boat with their father, Michael Quitasol, and stepmother, Fernisa Sison.

They were presumed to have been among those who were sleeping below deck when the fire started early Monday.

Evan Quitasol was a nurse at St. Joseph’s Medical Center of Stockton, and Michael Quitasol and Sison had been St. Joseph’s Medical Center employees after attending nursing school at San Joaquin Delta College.

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Sison worked at the college teaching first-year nursing students full time in 2005 and 2006 and later on an adjunct basis, according to the school’s spokesman, Alex Breitler.

“Everybody’s devastated. It’s a totally unexpected thing that happened,” said Dominic Selga, Sison’s ex-husband. “What caused the fire, that’s the big question, that’s what we all want to know.”

Selga said his ex-wife’s family had been on the boat “five or six” times and had been diving for a decade. Selga said the two families spent Mother’s Day and Father’s Day holidays together and called the Quitasols “great people.”

Rosas’ husband, Chris, said Nicole Quitasol worked as a bartender in Coronado near San Diego and her sister Angela was a science teacher at a middle school in Stockton.

The sisters were on the trip to celebrate their dad’s birthday, Chris Rosas said. He described them as “the most kind, most loving people I’ve ever met – and I’m not just saying that because they’re family.”

Susana Rosas posted on her Facebook page a link to a GoFundMe page for the Quitasol family.

"Tragically Nicole Quitasol and 4 of her family members were on the Conception boat in Santa Cruz that experienced an unimaginable tragedy," the page says.

The page says Susana Rosas gave her blessing to set up the fundraiser for funeral costs of all five family members.

"Our hearts are broken and we can't imagine the pain her family feels," it says.

Allie Kurtz

Cherie McDonough was at the scene to help authorities determine whether her daughter, Allie Kurtz, 25, was on the trip, NBC News reported. McDonough said she believes her daughter is one of the missing and presumed dead victims.

"She was following her dream," McDonough told NBC.

Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts confirmed Tuesday night that Kurtz was an alumna. Kurtz attended the Cincinnati Public School her senior year and graduated in 2011, a school representative said.

"The SCPA family extend our deepest condolences to her family," the school said in a Facebook message.

Scott Chan and Kendra Chan

Scott Chan, a physics teacher at American High School in Fremont, California, was on board with his daughter, said Brian Killgore, a spokesman for the Fremont Unified School District.

The district said in a statement that Chan taught advanced placement physics classes for the past three years at the school and was well-liked.

"His students knew him to be an innovative and inspiring teacher who developed a passion for physics among his students," the district said in a statement. "His loss is a tremendous tragedy for our school district."

He was on board Conception with his 26-year-old daughter Kendra Chan, who also died in the fire.

She was a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Office in Ventura, California. In a video the office posted last year, Kendra Chan talked about her parents' influence on her desire to pursue a career in science. She said in the video that she grew up scuba diving in the Channel Islands every year with her father.

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Chan said on his LinkedIn page that his teaching was fed by his "passion and wealth of real-world experience from research laboratories, and the electronics, computer, and high-performance automotive industries."

Charles McIlvain and Marybeth Guiney

A post on the Facebook page for Malibu Divers, a full-service dive store on the Pacific Coast Highway, requested stories to commemorate the lives of Charles McIlvain and Marybeth Guiney, who are believed to have died in the tragedy.

Wednesday, Netflix confirmed McIlvain – known as Chuck – was a creative pipeline engineer at the company.

"Our hearts go out to Chuck and his family, as well as everyone affected by this terrible tragedy," the company said in a statement e-mailed to USA TODAY. "Chuck was a magnetic person who had an incredible ability to connect with people and help them. This is devastating news for those who were fortunate to know him and he will be deeply missed by his friends and co-workers at Netflix.”

McIlvain's wife, filmmaker Jasmine Lord, said in a family statement that he and Guiney, the couple's friend and neighbor in Santa Monica, were on the boat.

Both lived their lives to the fullest, according to the statement.

“His laugh was the greatest and his smile could light up the dark,” the statement said. “He embraced life with exceptional joy, openness and humor, and all who knew him felt that warmth.”

Carter Crary, owner of Malibu Divers, said he regarded both as “clients and friends,’’ although he knew McIlvain better.

“He was one of the cheeriest, nicest guys I have ever met in my life," Crary said. “I never saw him when he wasn’t smiling. It just breaks my heart to think about him and Marybeth, and there may be a third person as well we might know."

Crary said McIlvain and his wife, filmmaker Jasmine Lord, were active in environmental causes.

The IMBD website lists film credits for McIlvain that include "Green Lantern" (2011), "Watchmen" (2009) and "Spider-Man" (2002).

Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz

ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix reported that an Arizona couple, Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz, were on the trip.

"They went to heaven doing something they loved together," Neal's father, John Baltz, told the station.

Beitzinger's family said they're waiting on "official confirmation" from authorities before commenting, according to KNXV-TV.

Apple employees and high school students

Computing giant Apple confirmed two of its employees and the family of one of them were on the Conception.

Deirdre O’Brien, a senior vice president at Apple, said in a statement that 30-year employee Steve Salika; his wife, Diana Adamic; daughter, Tia Salika; and Apple colleague Dan Garcia went on the doomed diving trip.

O’Brien told the Mercury News they were celebrating Tia’s 17th birthday.

Tia's friend Berenice Felipe was also on the diving trip. Both girls were students at Pacific Collegiate School, which confirmed in a letter addressed to the school community that the students were on the boat, according to NBC News.

Margo Peyton, who owns a South Carolina-based company that runs family-oriented dive trips around the world, said she had been diving with Steve, Diana and Tia for more than a decade.

“They were a wonderful family, pleasant, engaging. They were environmentally conscious,'' Peyton said. "They were very excited when Tia got licensed to dive. They loved the ocean.”

Lisa Fiedler

In an interview with KGO-TV in San Francisco, Nancy Fiedler said her only daughter, Lisa, 52, had been lost in the boat fire.

"Lisa texted me Sunday night... She just said I'm having a great time, beautiful spot,” Fiedler told KGO-TV.

According to her mother, Lisa grew up in Michigan but later moved to Marin County, north of San Francisco. She worked as a hairdresser in Mill Valley and was an avid nature photographer.

“The moment I picked up a camera, I realized that through the lens, I enjoyed creating and sharing images that reflect the way I absorb the grandeur of nature,” Lisa Fiedler said in a statement on her online portfolio. “I'm captivated by the rush and swell of water as it swirls around boulders, crashes upon the shore or tumbles down a waterfall.”

Adrian Dahood-Fritz and Andrew Fritz

Eliot Dahood told USA TODAY his sister Adrian Dahood-Fitz was on the Conception with her husband.

The couple had recently moved to Sacramento, California from Taylor, Texas, their friend Josh Baker told the Austin American Statesman. Dahood-Fitz worked as a research scientist and her husband Andrew Fitz was a photographer who had traveled the world scuba diving, Baker said.

They also volunteered at an animal shelter in Taylor, their friend Michele Johnson told the paper, and took pictures of dogs to help get them adopted.

“It was immensely helpful to us,” said Cmdr. Joseph Branson of the Taylor Police Department, which oversees the animal shelter. “Everything they did for the city and for the animal shelter we will always be grateful for . . . We mourn with their family and friends for their loss.”

Contributing: Madeline Mitchell, Cincinnati Enquirer; Sophie Carson, Sheboygan Press; the Ventura County Star; Kristin Lam, USA TODAY; The Associated Press.

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: California boat fire: Victims include Quitasol family, Allie Kurtz