Japanese authorities on Saturday temporarily suspended their search for dozens of missing sailors from a cargo ship that sank in a typhoon, as waves and strong wind caused by an approaching storm hampered the operation.
The Japan coast guard found a second survivor on Friday after the Gulf Livestock 1, which was carrying 6,000 cows and had 43 crew on board, issued a distress call Wednesday near Amami Oshima island as Typhoon Maysak passed through the area.
Typhoon Haishen, a much stronger storm, is expected to affect Japan from late Saturday, with winds of up to 290 kilometers per hour, making it a “violent” storm – the top level on the country’s classification scale.
“We resumed our search operation this morning by dispatching an airplane, but it returned without any clues,” a local coastguard official said.
“Now we plan to suspend our entire operation” until Haishen passes over the country, the official told AFP. The storm is scheduled to pass the country on Monday.
A first survivor was found on Wednesday evening, with the body of a second crew member recovered at sea Friday.
The Philippine foreign ministry said the two survivors—both Filipino—had been in contact with their respective families.
The crew was made up of 39 Filipinos, two New Zealanders and two Australians.
The Department of Labor and Employment on Saturday has identified the second rescued Filipino crew member as Jay-Nel Rosales, 30, from Cebu.
Labor chief Silvestre Bello III said Rosales, who was taken to the Kagoshima-ken Kenritsu Ooshima Hospital for a complete medical check-up, is stable and able to walk on his own.
The first to be rescued was the ship’s chief officer Eduardo Sareno, from Oslob, Cebu.
Bello said Sareno is still at the hospital and will be brought to a hotel for his quarantine later this week.
The cattle boat, which had experienced engine problems before, had been travelling from Napier in New Zealand to the Chinese port of Tangshan.
Meanwhile, tugboats battled into the night Friday to stop a blazing oil tanker carrying 270,000 tons of crude from drifting towards the Sri Lankan coast.
With one Filipino crew member killed in the explosion and the 22 others taken off, the tanker drifted 25 kilometers closer to the coast on Friday.
The fire on the Panamanian-registered New Diamond had been brought under control, according to the Indian coastguard. But smoke was still pouring from the 330-meter long vessel after an engine-room explosion set off the emergency.
The New Diamond was heading for the eastern Indian port of Paradip from Kuwait when it issued a distress signal 60 kilometers from Sri Lanka’s east coast.
Three tugboats – two Indian and one chartered by the owners – were brought into action in a bid to push the vessel back into deeper waters at sea.
The head of Sri Lanka’s Marine Environment Protection Agency Dharshani Lahandapura said legal action could be taken against the owners, Liberian-registered Porto Emporios Shipping Inc “should the worst happen and the ship breaks up.”
Lahandapura told reporters that Sri Lanka did not have the resources to contain a major oil spill.
Sri Lanka’s neighbor Maldives has raised concerns that any oil spill from the New Diamond could cause serious environmental damage in the atoll of 1,192 coral islands that depends on fisheries and tourism.
Maldivian minister at the president’s office, Ahmed Naseem, called for precautionary measures across the archipelago that is about 1,000 kilometers southwest of Sri Lanka.
“Maldives needs to watch this oil spill carefully and take all precautions to prevent it from reaching her shores,” Naseem said on Twitter. “This could be a major disaster.”
