Spain mourns the loss of ten fishermen after the sinking of a fishing ship – and trembles for the lives of eleven other men. In view of the stormy sea and the water temperature, there is little chance of survival.
It is still unclear why the Spanish fishing ship went down off the coast of Canada.
(dpa) The search for 12 missing crew members from a Spanish fishing trawler that sank off the east coast of Canada has been called off. This was announced by the Canadian Sea Rescue Service in Halifax on Twitter late Wednesday evening. Only three of the 24 sailors on board the “Villa de Pitanxo” were rescued from one of the ship’s two life rafts after the sinking on Tuesday.
Nine fishermen were recovered dead. It had previously been said that ten dead had been discovered. The second liferaft was found empty. With extremely cold water and stormy seas in the region about 450 kilometers east of Newfoundland, there was little hope of finding survivors.
It was initially unknown why the 50-meter-long deep-sea trawler from Galicia in north-west Spain went under. Experts did not rule out that cargo could have slipped in heavy seas and caused the ship to sink, as the newspaper “La Voz de Galicia” reported. According to the information, 16 of the crew members were Spanish, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. The survivors are two Spaniards and one Ghanaian.
Weather challenging for search
The intensive search for the missing persons was still in full swing until Tuesday evening (CET). “We have hope that others are still alive,” said Lieutenant Captain Brian Owens of the Canadian Armed Forces. However, the weather off the island of Newfoundland was “challenging” for the search operation by plane, helicopter and a Coast Guard ship, he admitted. The visibility is low and the waves are up to four meters high.
Even in distant Spain, hopes that the missing would be able to survive long in the ice-cold and stormy waters of the north-west Atlantic were very slim. María Ramallo, the mayor of Marín, the hometown of the shipwreck, made no secret of her hopelessness. She spoke of “a tragedy of a dimension that we cannot remember here”. It was “a very sad day for the whole region”. Galicia’s regional president Alberto Núñez Feijóo said skeptically: “The situation is very bad.”
Charge slipped?
Concern about the ship that crashed on Tuesday soon gripped the whole country, including the Palacio de la Moncloa government palace in Madrid. “We are following the search and rescue efforts with fear and concern,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez tweeted on Tuesday. He expressed his condolences and affection to the families of those affected.
The spokeswoman for the Spanish government, Isabel Rodríguez, admitted on Tuesday afternoon in Madrid that there were fears of numerous deaths. For the time being, nothing was known about the cause of the sinking. Experts did not rule out that the cargo could have slipped in heavy seas and caused the ship to sink. According to the Spanish media, several ships and helicopters from the Canadian sea rescue service as well as some fishing boats, including those from Portugal and Spain, took part in the rescue operation.
According to Owens, the maritime situation center in Halifax received information about a shipwreck shortly after midnight local time and immediately dispatched a helicopter, a plane and a Coast Guard ship and asked other ships in the area to participate in the search. “The ship has not been found and we suspect it has sunk.”