Fiorino said he alerted the Italian coast guard and other boats when he came upon desperate migrants just before 7 a.m. Thursday.
He and his friends lifted 47 people up onto his 10-meter (32-foot) boat.
Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island 70 miles (113 kilometers) off Tunisia, is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland and has been at the center of wave after wave of illegal immigration.
On Friday, Italian coast guard boats carrying divers headed out from Lampedusa to search for more bodies, but choppy waters hampered their efforts.
The scope of the tragedy at Lampedusa—with 111 bodies recovered so far, 155 people rescued and up to an estimated 250 still missing, according to officials—has prompted outpourings of grief.