At least 54 crew on a Russian fishing trawler died and 15 were missing after it sank in freezing waters off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Western Pacific Ocean late on Wednesday (April 1), officials in the area said.
63 of the 132 people on board the Dalniy Vostok were rescued with the sea’s temperature near zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), emergencies officials said.
“The rescue operation is continuing in the Sea of Okhotsk where trawler Dalniy Vostok sank. Currently more than 14 vessels are involved in the search and rescue mission. There were 132 people on the trawler, they were fishing,” said colonel Timur Tedeyev from the Russian Emergencies Ministry.
“At the moment the rescue operation is continuing. We have information that 63 people were picked up alive, while 43 dead bodies were also picked up,” he added.
Russia’s TASS news agency cited a deputy head of the Kamchatka region as saying the crew might have violated safety rules by exceeding the capacity of cargo storage.
The Russian Interfax news agency cited an unidentified source at the region’s rescue centre as saying that large amounts of drifting ice might have damaged the body of the ship, which sank within 15 minutes.
“At the moment after the ship disaster in the Sea of Okhotsk the Far Eastern prosecutor’s office initiated a review of safety on sea. In the course of this review we will assess whether the ship was at sea legally, we will look into the availability and quantity of the life-saving equipment, we will look whether the SOS signal was sent in timely fashion, we will check the crew qualifications and we will assess the actions by controlling authorities that gave a permission for the ship to sail into the sea,” said Yelena Barsukova from the Far Eastern transport prosecutor’s office.
Russia has a dismal air, road and water safety record, with negligence and corruption often the cause of accidents. In 2011, an ageing, overcrowded tourist boat sank in Russia’s Volga River, killing nearly 130 people in one of the worst post-Soviet ship disasters.
The trawler was carrying 78 Russian nationals, as well as 54 foreign nationals from Myanmar, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Vanuatu.
It sank in the Sea of Okhotsk, 330 km (205 miles) west of Krutogorovsky settlement in the Kamchatka region and 250 km (155 miles) south of the city of Magadan.
The home port of the trawler, which was owned by Magellan LLC, was Nevelsk in Russia’s Sakhalin region. (REUTERS)