At Least 10 Dead from Sunken Trawler off Canada, 11 Still Missing

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.

“Regrettably, Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) Halifax can confirm that an additional three deceased individuals have been recovered from the sunken fishing vessel,” the center said on its Twitter account. Earlier, it announced the recovery of seven bodies.

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.

Rescue operations were ongoing on Wednesday morning, 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, Spain’s fisheries ministry said.

The shipwreck was the most fatal involving a Spanish boat in years and was a particular blow to the Villa de Pitanxo’s home region of Galicia, in northwestern Spain, whose sailors have travelled the world’s seas for fish for centuries.

The Villa de Pitanxo sank around 450 km (280 miles) east-southeast of Newfoundland, the ministry said.

The Villa de Pitanxo was registered in Nores Marin, a fishing company based in Pontevedra, Galicia.

(Reuters - Reporting by Inti Landauro, Emma Pinedo and Nathan Allen; Editing by Alex Richardson and Frank Jack Daniel)