Nearly thirty-six hours after the sinking of a Spanish trawler off the Atlantic coast of Canada with 24 sailors on board, Canadian rescue estimated, Wednesday, February 16, “unlikely” to find survivors. the Pitanxo Villaa 50-meter-long trawler based in the small port of Marin, in Galicia, in northwestern Spain, sank Tuesday morning 450 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, in the icy waters of the ‘Atlantic.
“It is now unlikely that any other survivors will be found”said Lt. Nicolas Plourde-Fleury, spokesperson for the Canadian armed forces, adding that the search was however continuing off Newfoundland.
After indicating Tuesday evening that ten bodies had been found, Canadian relief rectified this assessment on Wednesday: nine sailors perished in the sinking, twelve people are still missing and three sailors were rescued. Suffering from hypothermia, the latter were rescued by a Spanish fishing boat and were evacuated by helicopters.
The water is indeed so cold that“A person falling there cannot last very long”, pointed out to the press Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, president of the region of Galicia. Despite everything, the search continued in the Atlantic where the rescue services, which mobilized several boats, an airplane and a helicopter, had to deal with “ten meter waves” and very strong winds, said Brian Owens, Canadian spokesperson for the Rescue and Coordination Center.
“The Greatest Tragedy”
This crash is “the greatest tragedy for thirty-eight years” for the Spanish fisheries sector, underlined the Spanish Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas, with reference to the sinking of the trawler Islamar III, which killed 26 off the Spanish archipelago of the Canaries in July 1984. According to Mr. Planas, eight ships are currently mobilized in the area of the sinking to try to find the missing. Among them are ships belonging to the “Canadian authorities” helped by “Spanish and Portuguese fishing boats”he specified.
In Madrid, the Spanish deputies observed a minute of silence in the hemicycle. “Spain wakes up in shock this morning”insisted the President of Parliament, the socialist Meritxell Batet. “Once again, the people of the sea are hit hard” by a tragedy, said Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, who decreed three days of mourning in Galicia.
According to the Spanish authorities, the crew consisted of sixteen Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. Among the Spanish sailors, many came from Galicia, the first region in Europe and second in the world for the production of canned fish and shellfish.
Contacted by Agence France-Presse, the Nores group, owner of the boat, said “not having a lot of information” and not “not wishing to communicate before the end of the research”. According to the local authorities, 44,000 people depend on the fishing sector in Galicia, a region which concentrates 20% of European fish production, and where 10% of the fresh fish sent to the European Union passes through.