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Moscow (AFP) Jan 7, 2011 Two Russian boats and a jet scoured the country's stormy Far East seas Friday in a desperate search for at least 11 fishermen whose schooner sank off Sakhalin Island. The vessel's captain sent a last minute distress signal suggesting that the crew had been unable to deploy their life rafts on time and officials reported no progress in their initial bid to locate the craft. "Attention, attention: whoever can hear me," the federal fisheries agency quoted the last message from the Partner schooner as saying. "Partner -- suffering distress," said the ship's captain. "We are going under. Only one of the life rafts deployed, and even that one did not do so correctly." Two Russian transport boats and an An-24 jet were sent on a search and rescue mission that was being staged amid unusually fierce storms that have seen gusts of up to 65 miles per hour (105 kilometres per hour) But Interfax reported that at least one of the ships and the jets had given up their search for Friday and would only resume their work with sunrise. Initial Russian reports said the schooner had a crew of 14 and that the craft was owned by a small firm registered in Belize. The accident was only the latest to affect Russian fishing vessels this winter. Three more craft with more than 400 people on board became stranded in the Sea of Okhotsk on December 30 in a high-seas drama that dominated television news. The Admiral Makarov icebreaker was only able to reach the first of the three vessels on Thursday and not expected to return to the two remaining larger ships until the weekend. The Sea of Okhotsk -- an arm of the Pacific stretching between the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island -- is a fishing mecca that turns dangerous for much of the winter season as the region becomes whipped by daily storms.
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Major fish kill reported in S. CarolinaCharleston, S.C. (UPI) Jan 6, 2011 Hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed ashore on the South Carolina coast Thursday morning, littering the sand along the tide line, wildlife officials said. State wildlife biologists say early indications are that it's another in a series of wildlife die-offs blamed on record-breaking cold conditions around the nation this winter, The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier reported. ... read more |
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