Lookout! – Issue 15
21 December 2009
Guidance notice – Issue 17:
Long-range identification and tracking (LRIT) equipment testing
21 December 2009
08 December 2005
This afternoon two helicopters are searching a 570km length of coastline for three fishermen who have been missing since their commercial vessel Mi Jay left Nelson on 22 November.
This latest development in the search follows no sightings of the fishermen despite an extensive search covering 90,000 square kilometres on Tuesday, and frequent broadcasts to mariners at sea.
The helicopter crew are scouring the shoreline where the men may have ended up if they had needed to evacuate Mi Jay in their lifeboat.
RCCNZ has analysed the possible drift patterns and found they would have drifted west to northwest. Given this information, one helicopter has searched from Castlepoint down to near Wellington, and another is searching the South Island from Cape Campbell to the entrance to the Rangitata River, which is just north of Timaru.
RCCNZ mission controller Dave Wilson says if there’s a chance they ended up along this shoreline they may be in a remote location or be injured, so it’s important this area is searched.
“The other scenario we’ve been investigating is whether they went fishing in a different location. So we’ve also been searching around New Zealand through ports, and broadcasting messages out to sea. However, this does remain an unlikely possibility as our investigation so far clearly points to them intending to fish in the Mernoo Bank area, which is about 210 kilometres east of Canterbury.
“Unfortunately, searching is made much more difficult if vessels have not kept in regular contact such as via scheduled radio calls,” he said.
The skipper of the Mi Jay is Paul Rees, 52, of Nelson. The names of the other two men cannot be confirmed at this stage; however they are both in their 50s and are from Nelson.
Background
On Tuesday, an Air Force Orion searched a 90,000 square kilometre area from Banks Peninsula to Castlepoint, up to 150 miles offshore.
The 13-metre-long vessel, Mi Jay, was expected to arrive back in Nelson within two weeks. The owner of the vessel contacted RCCNZ at 9am on Tuesday to report his crew to be overdue.
The Mi Jay has good communications equipment on board including a VHF and HF radio, yet there has been no contact.
For further information contact:
RCCNZ Media Line
Phone 04 499 7318