Sea rescue services from the Canadian city of Halifax found and recovered 10 bodies from a Spanish fishing trawler that sank in rough sea off the eastern coast of Canada, the services said late on Tuesday, though 11 of the crew are still missing.
Three surviving sailors from the trawler, suffering from severe
hypothermia, were plucked from a life raft early on Tuesday. It was not
immediately clear what caused the trawler, called the Villa de Pitanxo,
to sink.
Meanwhile, rescue operations were ongoing on Wednesday, involving a
plane, two helicopters, rescue ships and one Spanish and two Portuguese
trawlers, the Spanish marine rescue agency said.
The vessel, with a crew of 24 comprising 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians
and three Ghanaians, launched a distress beacon at 0424 GMT.
The shipwreck was the most fatal involving a Spanish boat in years and
was a particular blow to Galicia, in northwestern Spain, whose sailors
have travelled the world’s seas to fish for centuries.
