The 14 crew members of a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion will rest and recover today after three days searching for 29 fishermen missing in the Pacific Ocean off Kiribati.
The air force, which worked alongside the New Zealand Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC), was alerted after the Ta Ching 21 was found by a Korean fishing boat in a burnt out condition, still afloat but with no one on board in the Fiji search and rescue region on November 9.
The last radio transmission from the vessel -- a personal call on a satellite phone from the captain to his wife in Taiwan -- took place on October 28.
After more than 30 hours of searching across 54,000 square kilometres of ocean "there is no sign of anything", RCC spokesman Ross Henderson said last night. "There has been no luck today, unfortunately." With the area of the likely location of the fishermen now searched without any sighting, a reassessment and re-evaluation of the search will be made by the RCC in Suva. The P-3K Orion and crew will remain on standby in Port Vila.
The P-3K Orion captain, Squadron Leader Mike Pearson, said that the Air Force and RCC in New Zealand would liaise with the search controllers in Fiji to determine the plan from this point on.
"We have made a thorough and complete check of the search area, unfortunately without success," he said.
"Without more information coming to hand or possible sightings being made known to us we are not left with too many more options at this stage. We will take direction from the RCC in Suva now and obviously continue to assist in any way we can." A decision to continue with the search will be made after a search reassessment is made.
Mr Henderson said Fiji was also sending officials to a number of small islands located north of Kiribati that are sparsely inhabited by indigenous tribes with no modern means of communications, to see if any of the crew had come to shore. The result of those missions was not yet known.
The Ta Ching was crewed by Taiwanese, Chinese Filipino and Indonesian fishermen. When it was found three life rafts and a rescue boat were missing -- seen by searchers as a positive sign that the crew was able to abandon ship safely.
