42 missing off Japan after ship hauling livestock sinks
The 456-foot cargo ship, longer than a soccer field, lost an engine as it traversed choppy seas off the coast of Japan. Then a wave flooded its deck in the dark of night, according to a survivor, forcing the vessel to list at a precarious angle.
Inside were dozens of crew members and nearly 6,000 cows on their way from New Zealand to China.
“When it was capsizing, an onboard announcement instructed us to wear a life jacket,” crew members Sareno Edvardo of the Philippines later told the Japanese coast guard. “So I wore a life jacket and jumped into the sea.”
After the ship sent a distress signal in the early hours of Wednesday, Japan scrambled three patrol planes and four coast guard boats. But it would be nearly 24 hours before rescuers found Edvardo, 45, bobbing in the East China Sea.
He was the only one, and he said he had watched the ship sink.
Rescue efforts continued Thursday as Typhoon Maysak lashed parts of South Korea, north of where Edvardo was found, with heavy rain and gusts of up to 90 mph, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without power.
Maysak later weakened to a tropical storm as it moved toward North Korea. But even if that made rescuers’ jobs easier, it seemed increasingly unlikely that there would be more survivors.
The ship, Gulf Livestock 1, was believed to have 43 crew members, including 39 from the Philippines, the Japanese coast guard said. The foreign ministries of New Zealand and Australia each said that two of their countries’ citizens were among the crew.
The Philippines is one of the world’s leading suppliers of merchant seafarers, whose remittances help to fuel the country’s economy. Last year, there were nearly 500,000 Filipino seafarers on vessels ranging from oil tankers to cruise ships.
The livestock carrier left Napier, New Zealand, on Aug. 14 with a cargo of 5,867 cattle and had been expected to arrive in the Chinese port city of Tangshan about 17 days later, New Zealand’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The ship is registered in Panama and was built as a livestock carrier in 2002, according to Vesselfinder.com, a tracking website. A photo on the site shows cattle berths stacked high on its deck, as rooms might be on a luxury cruise liner. The ship’s registered owner is Rahmeh Compania Naviera SA, a company based in Amman, Jordan, Reuters reported.
The episode raises fresh questions about transporting livestock by sea, a practice that has been criticized for its treatment of animals.
Millions of sheep and heads of cattle are shipped every year, generating hefty profits for meat producers in countries such as Australia and New Zealand. But animalrights advocates say that such journeys are often too long, regulations are insufficient, and the rules are easily flouted.
Activists say that the vessels are usually converted cargo ships that do not meet animal-welfare standards, and that the livestock face heat stress, overcrowding and the spread of disease during the journeys.