Greek flagged VLCC Australis collided with a Chinese fishing vessel Zhe Ling Yu 91002 in the East China Sea near Zhoushan on Friday night.
collided with a Chinese fishing vessel Zhe Ling Yu 91002 in the East China Sea near Zhoushan on Friday night.Six crew from the fishing vessel fell overboard and are missing.
The local maritime rescue centre alerted nearby vessels and the navy to join search and rescue operations, which are still ongoing.
The tanker, which is owned by Greek company Chandris Hellas, has also joined rescue operations.
Whilst it is a tragedy that 6 fishermen are missing and probably lost, I am not surprised. In fact I am surprised that there are not many more incidents of this type in the East China Sea. Having just observed a passage on a cape sized bulker from Jingtang to Taicang where we spent almost 56 hours in restricted visibility threading our way south through hundreds, if not thousands, of fishing boats many of which totally ignored the requirements of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS), what do you expect?. In these situations, unless the vessel stops, there will always be occasions when collisions are unavoidable.