Pangasinan News

He had a visa and just the job—six months of work at sea and thousands in pay to send home. Then the virus struck.And like millions of other migrant workers who leave the Philippines to work abroad and send their earnings back to a myriad of dependents, a whole family saw its lifeline cut.“I was broke. Things were not easy for me and my family. I badly needed to go back to work at that time so I was looking forward to that trip,” said sailor Carlos Salvador Jr.Salvador was all…

China's coastguard has prevented Filipino boats from fishing around the hotly contested Scarborough Shoal, Philippine officials said on Friday, after Beijing kept a promise to ignore a court ruling voiding its vast South China Sea claims. A dispute over the shoal, 124 nautical miles northwest of the Philippines mainland was one of Manila's main reasons for bringing international legal action against China in 2013. Military officials and fishermen in northwest province of Pangasinan said Chinese coastguard vessels remained in place at Scarborough and were still preventing fishermen from entering the shoal's lagoon. Many boats had stayed away until the situation was clearer, officials said.

On October 3, NYK Joanna, a containership operated by NYK, rescued seven fishermen in distress off the coast of the Philippines. While the NYK vessel was sailing on October 3 from Vungtau, Vietnam, to Tokyo, Japan, the ship’s crew discovered the fishermen drifting off the coast of Philippines and rescued all of them in about two hours. The fishermen had departed from Pangasinan in the Philippines on September 30, and their boat had overturned and sunk in bad weather on October 2. The seven fishermen were due to disembark from NYK Joanna at the port of Tokyo on October 7 and then return home. Ship management: NYK Shipmanagement Pte. Ltd.

China on Wednesday defended the actions of its vessels in the disputed South China Sea after the Philippines accused China's coast guard of using water cannon on Philippine fishing boats and urged Manila to increase its "education" of its fishermen. Filipino fishermen said that China's coast guard boarded their fishing boats and threw away fish catch and fishing gear last week after spraying them with water in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea. The presidential palace in Manila said China's coast guard used water cannon on Monday to drive away a group of Filipino fishermen at Scarborough Shoal, damaging some of their wooden boats. Chinese ships rammed a fishing boat in the area a few months ago.

Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) rescued a stranded mariner Dec. 9 while operating south of the Hawaiian Islands. Paul Hamilton Sailors rendered assistance to Ron Ingraham after receiving a distress call from U.S. Coast Guard District 14's Honolulu Sector. Ingraham, stranded at sea since Nov. 27, was caught in a storm that blew his vessel approximately 200 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands, leaving him without food or water for 12 days. The Coast Guard ceased searching for Ingraham Dec. 1 after Coast Guard and Navy crews conducted an extensive search of the area, flying 59 sorties and covering approximately 12,000 square miles. "I thought I was going to die today," said Ingraham.

MV Harita Bauxite, a Handymax bulk carrier sank recently off Cape Bolinao with the loss of 14 of the 24 crew. According to the Philippine's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council a distress rocket signal was sighted by the MV Jin Cheng on 18, February, 2013 in the vicinity of Cape Bolinao, Bolinao, Pangasinan. Ten crew members were subsequently rescued by Jin Cheng and later taken to shore by helicopter. Reportedly the Harita Bauxite had sunk following (unspecified) engine trouble. The Panama-registered, 1983-built handymax ship which was reportedly carrying a cargo of nickel ore from Obi, Indonesia to China, sank on the evening of 17 February after suffering engine failure, possibly during poor weather.