Canadian rescue services search for 11 sailors from sunken Spanish trawler

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Bad weather on Wednesday complicated the search for 11 missing crew members of a Spanish fishing trawler that sank in rough winter seas off the east coast of Canada, killing at least 10, according to a Canadian Rescue Worker.

Three surviving sailors from the trawler, suffering from severe hypothermia, were pulled from a life raft early on Tuesday. It is not immediately clear what sank the Villa de Pitanxo trawler. Read more

“Our planes are refueling and returning to conduct more daytime searches,” Halifax Joint Rescue Coordination Center spokesman Brian Owens said. “The weather has deteriorated since last night…”

Owens said the sea was at 10 meters (33 feet), with winds of 45 knots (52 miles per hour) (83 km/h) and visibility of three to four nautical miles (3-1/2 about 4-1 /2 miles (5.6 to 7.4 km), “which complicates the search”.

“But we are still engaged in the search for the remaining 11 crew members,” he added.

Continued rescue operations on Wednesday involved a plane, two helicopters, rescue vessels and a Spanish and two Portuguese trawler, the Spanish maritime rescue agency said.

The Villa de Pitanxo, with a crew of 24 including 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians, launched a distress beacon at 04:24 GMT Tuesday (23:24 EST Monday), the Spanish Fisheries Ministry said.

The vessel sank about 450 km (280 miles) east-southeast of Newfoundland, the Department of Fisheries said.

The sinking was the deadliest involving a Spanish boat in years and dealt a particular blow to Villa de Pitanxo’s home region of Galicia in northwestern Spain, whose sailors sailed the seas of the world to fish for centuries.

Within the Nores Marin group, the company based in the Galician town of Pontevedra which owns the ship, relatives of the crew have gathered in search of news. Spanish authorities said the bodies have not been formally identified.

“At the moment we don’t know anything, and I really can’t talk about it,” the wife of missing fisherman Edwin Cordoba Salinas told reporters.

“They haven’t found it yet and at the moment we are waiting to see what happens,” she added.

Reporting by Ismail Shakil, Inti Landauro, Emma Pinedo and Nathan Allen; Editing by Alex Richardson, Frank Jack Daniel and Jonathan Oatis

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