Japan halts search for crew on sunken freighter | NOW

The Japanese Coast Guard has stopped the search for the dozens of missing crew members of the cargo ship Gulf Livestock 1 that sunk last week, reports news agency AFP Thursday. Two crew members are the only known survivors to date.

“We have not found any leads,” said the coast guard, which promises to keep an eye out for the cargo ship during regular patrols.

The ship had a total of 43 crew members on board and was carrying about 6,000 cows when it disappeared from the radar during a typhoon last Wednesday. Rescue services searched ships and planes for a week for survivors of the disaster. Last weekend, that search was temporarily suspended due to bad weather.

The first survivor, a 45-year-old Filipino chief officer, was fished from the sea a day after the disaster. He said that the ship had developed engine problems, after which the vessel capsized and sank. The man said he had put on a life jacket and jumped into the sea after a warning signal had sounded on board.

A second survivor, a thirty-year-old Filipino sailor, was found a day later in a life raft at sea. The coast guard then found only an empty dinghy, a life jacket and several dead cows in the waves.

It remains unclear exactly when and where Gulf Livestock 1 sank. When the 12,000-ton vessel sent a distress call, it was sailing west of the Japanese island of Amami Oshima in the East China Sea.

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