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Incident

Search scaled back for 17 missing men after ship sinks

14 December 2010 04:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Search and rescue efforts have been scaled back for 17 men missing since a South Korean fishing vessel sank Monday in the frigid Southern Ocean waters of Antarctica, a New Zealand rescue agency said, APA reports quoting CNN.
"As time passes the chances of any of the remaining crew surviving are increasingly slim," the Rescue Coordination Centre in New Zealand said.
Two vessels have already been released from the search team, according to Maritime New Zealand, a government agency which monitors the ships and waters of coastal New Zealand. The rescue team said it will "re-evaluate the situation," and make a decision about continuing the search in the morning.
The ship sank about 6:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. ET Sunday) in a remote swatch of the Antarctic Ocean some 1,850 km (1,150 miles) north of McMurdo, a U.S. research center on the tip of Ross Island. Maritime New Zealand learned of the incident around 1 p.m., some 4 1/2 hours later.
The New Zealand agency and the Korea Coast Guard said that five people died, 20 were rescued and 17 were missing.
A time-sensitive search has been underway for the missing men, said Maritime New Zealand spokesman Ross Henderson. While the ship sank in the Southern Hemisphere’s late spring, water temperatures are just 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit), meaning crew members likely could only survive no more than 10 minutes before succumbing to hypothermia, authorities said.
"Indications from the rescue vessel and also the company was that all the survivors went into the water without life jackets, without immersion suits, so we’re looking at a maximum survival time of about 10 minutes in 2-degree waters," Maritime New Zealand Rescue Coordinator Dave Wilson told CNN affiliate TVNZ on Monday. "By the time the aircraft were going to be on scene it was probably about eight or nine hours after the affect."
The 58-meter (190-foot) fishing trawler, the No. 1 Insung, left on November 2 from South Korea to fish in Antarctic waters, said Ham. It had 11 Indonesians, 11 Vietnamese, eight Koreans, eight Chinese, three Filipinos and one Russian on board, he said.
There was no emergency radio call before the incident, and it is still not clear what happened, Henderson said.