Rescuers were trying to find survivors on Tuesday after the sinking of a Spanish trawler in the Atlantic, which left four dead, 17 missing and three survivors overnight from Monday to Tuesday off Canada.
According to the Spanish authorities, 24 crew members were on board this boat, the “Villa de Pitanxo”, when it sank around 04:30 GMT (00:30 locally) 450 kilometers south-east of the island of Newfoundland.
Three were rescued, four were found dead and 17 are missing, the Spanish Transport Ministry said. At first, the ministry had reported 22 people on board the boat.
Contacted by AFP, Canadian relief workers said they hoped to find other survivors in the search area, despite unfavorable weather conditions.
“The fact that we have already found three survivors in a lifeboat gives us hope that others were able to put on their survival suits, get into a lifeboat and leave the boat,” Brian Owens told AFP. , a spokesperson for the Canadian emergency services.
The ‘Villa de Pitanxo’, a 50-metre-long trawler based in the small port of Marín, in the province of Pontevedra, in Galicia (north-west Spain), has, at this stage, still not not found, the spokesman said.
“Accident”
According to Spanish sea rescue, the crew consisted of 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. Among the Spanish sailors, many came from Galicia.
The boat had an “accident” and “sent a distress signal”, and two ships came to its rescue, Rosa Quintana, the Galician regional government’s head of maritime affairs, told reporters.
It was another Spanish boat, the “Playa Menduina Dos”, which finally found around 09:30 GMT (05:30 local time) the bodies of the four victims, as well as three survivors in a lifeboat, the ministry said.
These three sailors, whose nationality has not been specified, were evacuated in a state of hypothermia by a Canadian sea rescue helicopter, said Ms. Quintana.
According to the sub-prefect of Pontevedra, Maica Larriba, a total of four lifeboats were spotted by the rescuers, who found several life jackets and numerous objects at the scene of the sinking.
Help was able to approach “three of them: two were empty, completely empty”, she explained, adding that the three survivors were found in the third boat.
“A tragedy”
According to the Spanish Ministry of Transport, the causes of the accident are currently “not known”. The weather conditions were nevertheless bad, with “wind” and “reduced visibility”, he said.
“The weather at the moment complicates our research. The waves are about four meters high and the visibility is reduced to about a quarter of a nautical mile,” Brian Owens confirmed, adding that the search would continue “whatever the weather”.
Canadian rescue deployed a helicopter, a military plane, a coast guard vessel and several boats to conduct the search off Saint John of Newfoundland, the easternmost Canadian province of the country.
“We are following with concern the search and rescue missions of the crew of the Galician ship”, reacted on Twitter the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, expressing “(his) friendship to their families”.
The mayor of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Lores, also expressed his “concern”, stating that sailors from around this city were on board the trawler.
“It’s a tragedy,” the aunt of one of the “Villa de Pitanxo” sailors, Jonathan Calderón, told the Galician daily La Voz de Galicia in tears. The 39-year-old is the father of two children, she said.
The “Villa de Pitanxo”, a fifty-meter trawler flying the Spanish flag, belongs to the fishing group Nores, which has eight refrigerated trawlers and 300 employees, according to its website.
Contacted by AFP, the group could not be reached on Tuesday afternoon.