A tragic accident occurred on Monday near the Malvinas Islands, when fishing boat Argos Georgia sank some 370 kilometres east of the archipelago’s capital. After the incident, there are at least nine crewmen dead, while four people are still missing and fourteen were rescued alive, according to information provided by Malvinas maritime authorities. The vessel was in the middle of a storm when it suffered a leak.
The crew of the FV Argos Georgia consisted of 27 sailors: 10 Spaniards, eight Russians, five Indonesians, two Uruguayans and two Peruvians. 14 of them have been rescued. The property of British-Norwegian shipowner Argos Froyanes, the boat used to fly the Saint Helena flag.
Pedro Blanco, delegate of the Spanish government in Galicia, gave a press conference where he updated the number of casualties, provided details of the rescue operation and also the moments before the incident, more specifically the last communication with the fishing boat. This was when the crew warned they were going to abandon ship to enter three life rafts.
“We received the information that she had suffered a leak and was sinking some 200 miles off the coast with 27 crewmen”, the official specified.
The 54-metre vessel fished Patagonian toothfish and ended up sinking at 4 pm on Monday, after its crew tried to salvage the breach on its hull where seawater started leaking and it became an emergency.
The operation to search for those missing is still ongoing as of Wednesday, though it is against the clock, because this part of the Atlantic, opposite the Argentine coast, is in the middle of winter. They are very cold waters and a complicated sea: 35-knot winds, seven-metre waves and four degrees of temperature, Blanco explained. Even so, there is still hope of finding some of the four people missing.
The Malvinas government issued a release explained that the adverse climate conditions make the search area “outside the limits for SAR operations with helicopters", though the situation is being reviewed periodically “with a view to resuming operations as soon as possible”. “The operation is being run by the maritime authority of the Malvinas Islands, who are providing the specific information of events”, stated Blanco.
As for the leak on the hull of the vessel, he held that for now there were no more details of the shipwreck. “An investigation of events is being conducted, and as more is known we will provide results, and to families as well, because that is the commitment of the Spanish government”, Blanco informed.
The impact with a body similar to an iceberg, a bad manoeuvre or a failure in some water intake valve. Those are three possible causes of the sinking of the Argos Georgia fishing boat. All of the crew managed to abandon ship, board the life rafts, but only 14 people survived.
The Argos Georgia was intended for Antarctic Waters and it operated there frequently. Since July 2023 alone, the vessel frequented the Malvinas Islands three times, where it sank on Monday afternoon.
--TIMES/PERFIL
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