The F/V Argos Georgia has sunk in the South Atlantic Ocean near the Falkland Islands, and the fate of its 27 crew members remains unknown.
The vessel, which was fishing for toothfish, sprang a leak in heavy seas around 200 miles east of the Falklands on Monday, 22 July, and the crew was eventually forced to abandon ship at around 4 p.m. local time, according to the BBC.
A rescue operation has been launched by the governments of the Falkland Islands and the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, the U.K. Maritime and Coastguard Agency, British Forces South Atlantic Ocean – represented by the patrol vessel Lilibet – and the Spanish Maritime Safety and Rescue Society (Salvamento Marítimo). Two private fishing vessels, including the F/V Robin M. Lee and the F/V Puerto Toro, are also involved in the search.
One of the vessel’s life rafts was sighted by the Robin M. Lee on Monday evening, but “extremely challenging” weather conditions impeded any rescue, according to Salvamento Marítimo. A British Forces South Atlantic Islands (BFSAI) Atlas aircraft has been tracking and reporting the position of at least one life raft, but planes and helicopters involved in the search have been limited in their involvement due to high winds and the distance of the site of the sinking from land, it said.
“There are 35 knots of wind and waves of up to 8 meters and getting worse," Robin M. Lee Captain Jorge Sampedro told Faro de Vigo. "It's going to be very difficult to collect them.”
The Falklands government said the entire crew boarded life rafts before the Argos Georgia sank, but other organizations involved in the rescue have not confirmed how many crew made it into life boats or what their condition might be. Of the 27 crew, 10 are Spanish, including two fishery observers. Additionally, there are eight Russians, five Indonesians, two Uruguayans, and two Ecuadorians onboard.
The Argos Georgia is owned by Argos Froyanes, a privately owned British-Norwegian partnership between Argos and Ervik Havfiske. The vessel was built in 2018 at the Tersan shipyard in Yalova, Turkey. The 53-meter-long ship is flagged in Santa Elena in the U.K.-owned overseas territory of Saint Helena. It left Port Stanley, in the Falklands, to begin its fishing trip on Sunday, 21 July.
Argos Froyanes has not issued any public comment and declined to comment when contacted by various media outlets.
The Falkland Islands, 300 miles east of Argentina in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, are self-governing, though they remain a part of the U.K. They play host to a fleet of vessels fishing year-round for a diverse range of species, including loligo and illex squid, southern blue whiting, hake, king clip, red cod, rock cod, and Patagonian toothfish.
Its government has pushed for the creation of a regional fisheries management organization to oversee and regulate the high seas in the Southwest Atlantic.
