BUT CAN YOU HELP?
Posted on 01/14/2003 9:24:43 AM PST by yankeedame
Authorities baffled over abandoned fishing vessel
January 15 2003
Authorities have so far found no plausible explanation for the mysterious disappearance of the crew of a Taiwanese ship found adrift off the West Australian coast with tonnes of rotten fish aboard.
The Taiwanese-registered fishing vessel High Aim 6 was towed to a quarantine bay off Broome, 2350 kilometres north of Perth, last Friday.
The navy boarded the abandoned vessel on January 9 when it was seen adrift north of Rowley Shoals.
The ship was in good condition, the weather had been fine, and the crew's personal items, including seven toothbrushes, were still aboard.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) co-ordinator of operations Bill Graham said that officers spent two days conducting tests on the 20-metre, 150-tonne vessel.
But they remained baffled by the crew's disappearance.
"At this stage we have not located the crew or discovered any plausible reason for their absence," Mr Graham said.
"The ship itself gives us no evidence of foul play, but our prime concern at this stage is to identify crew members and locate them to determine if they are safe or missing."
The vessel, which was found flying an Indonesian flag, left Ping Dung county in Taiwan on October 30 last year.
The last known contact with the vessel was on December 13 when the boat's owners were contacted by the captain from the Marshall Islands, halfway between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii.
The crew is believed to comprise a Taiwanese captain and an engineer, and an unknown number of Indonesian fishermen.
The owners reported the vessel missing after December 13 when attempts to make further contact failed.
The US coastguard searched for the vessel but failed to find it.
Mr Graham said investigators could not say if the ship had been hijacked, or if it had been steered towards Australia by the vessel's autopilot or a second crew.
"We're keeping an open mind," he said.
"We don't believe that the ship actually made landfall in Australia but at this stage where they went missing is still a bit of a mystery to us.
"There are a number of options that may have led to the abandoning of the ship, including natural events."
The mystery disappearance is reminiscent of the ill-fated ship Marie Celeste which was found abandoned and drifting in the Atlantic in 1872.
Mr Graham admitted authorities might never learn what happened to the fishermen.
But he was confident an air search of 7300 square nautical mile last week would have spotted the crew if they had launched the ship's life raft off Western Australia's north coast.
The well-equipped vessel had plenty of fuel and a freezer, but its three tonne catch of mostly tuna had rotted because the engines had stopped and the batteries had run flat.
AAP
?
Do we still need air searches when we have spy satellites that see everything?
Whatever you do, DON'T get on that ship!
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