South Korean officials expressed fear on Tuesday of a huge death toll after rescuers failed to find any of the more than 50 fishermen missing after their ship sank amid high waves in the freezing waters of the western Bering Sea on Monday.
Authorities rescued seven crew members and recovered one body, but weather and water conditions complicated the search for the others, an official from the South Korean fisheries and oceans ministry said.
The crew included 35 Indonesians, 13 Filipinos, 11 South Koreans and one Russian inspector, the official said. Russian authorities said there were 62 people aboard the ship, which sank in the western part of the Bering Sea, near Russia.
The South Korean ministry official said it’s believed that the ship, which was catching pollock, began to list after stormy weather caused seawater to flood its storage areas. Kim Kang-ho from Sajo Industries, the canned tuna company that owns the ship, said the 2,000-ton vessel was 36 years old.
An official from South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday morning that the death toll was expected to rise because rescuers failed to find any of the missing passengers. Four fishing ships that were operating nearby continue to search for survivors, but harsh weather conditions have limited their mobility, the official said.
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won told a Cabinet meeting that the government will work with Russia to speed up the rescue efforts.
Authorities in the Russian port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky said the rescued fishermen were well and would be taken to South Korea once the weather improves.
Mr. Kim from Sajo said the ship left for the Bering Sea from Busan on July 10 for the Bering Sea to catch pollock, a winter delicacy in South Korea.
Another official from Sajo said the ship had eight lifeboats and that the seven fishermen who survived and the person later found dead used one of them to escape. The captain of the ship had issued an escape order and it was believed that the rest of the crew also attempted to escape, he said.
At the time of the sinking, the waves were more than 13 feet high and the water temperatures were below minus-10 degrees Celsius, he said.
