Twenty-four people were on the ship from Pontevedra, sixteen of them Spanish, two Ghanaians and the rest Peruvians. At 5 in the morning contact with the Villa de Pitanxo was lost in the midst of “very rough seas” in the Newfoundland fishing ground
The Newfoundland Sea is cod and halibut water, cold, ice and survival. And from this Tuesday, also, the scene of one of the worst tragedies of the Spanish deep-sea fishery. At five o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, 250 miles from the coast of the Canadian island, “the beacon jumped” from the Pontevedra fishing vessel Villa de Pitanxo. The trail had been lost. He was no longer transmitting a signal. In the midst of very rough seas, exposed to a more virulent storm than usual in the North Atlantic, the 24 crew members of the Marin freezer trawler struggled to survive the icy winter tides after the sinking of the ship.
Three sailors, Juan Padín, 53 years old; his nephew Eduardo Rial, 42; and an unidentified third party are, at the moment, the only survivors of the Villa de Pitanxo shipwreck. A ship owned by the Nores de Marín Group, built in 2004 for around five million euros and belonging to the Cooperative of Fisheries Owners of the Port of Vigo, the Grand Banks fleet.
The bodies of seven companions were recovered from the water by the Canadian Maritime Rescue service and another 14 were still missing, with little or no hope of finding them alive after hours. Sailors managed to launch four life rafts before the 50-meter long fishing boat sank. But only in one were the survivors found “in hypothermic shock, because the temperature of the water is terrible, very low” (it can reach three degrees), explained this Tuesday the deputy delegate of the Government in Pontevedra Maica Larriba, the first to spread the sad news after 12 in the morning. When the rescuers accessed the other three rafts, they found no one else.
The crew consisted of 24 crew members, 16 of whom are Spanish, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. And most of the sailors come from the Morrazo region of Pontevedra: three were from Cangas, three from Marín, one from Moaña and another from Bueu. It is known that one more was born in Huelva and an observer from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, on board the ship, was from the Canary Islands. The rest of the foreign crew members resided in the province of Pontevedra.
“Don’t worry, we’re fine”
In the absence of collecting more data, the most likely, given the characteristics of this type of fishing vessel, is that a tidal wave could have caused the cargo to shift and facilitated its sinking. The trawler had a freezing capacity of 24 tons and is designed to navigate in deep waters (more than 800 meters deep) and in adverse weather conditions in the North Atlantic, where it was mainly dedicated to catching Greenland halibut, one of the specialties from the port of Marin. From there they left on January 26 and planned to return home on May 23.
The skipper of the fishing boat is Juan Padín, from Aldán (Cangas), an experienced sailor who knows the waters of Newfoundland well, where Galician and Basque shipowners have established commercial ties since the mid-20th century, especially in the heat of the golden years of the Cod.
Padín was able to speak with his family and confirm that he had survived. “Do not worry. Eduardo and I are fine », he reassured them. «I, despite it, I am happy, but the scare we went through is not taken away from us nor do I wish it on anyone. This is very painful,” said Sara, Eduardo’s girlfriend, with great respect for all the families waiting for news from Canada. The last time she had spoken to him it was half past four in the morning and she had told him that there was very bad weather in the area.
Deep-sea fishing is survival and camaraderie and after the Villa de Pitanxo capsized several sister fishing vessels such as the Playa de Menduiña, owned by the same shipowner based in Marín, and the Portuguese Novo Virgem da Barca have joined the relief efforts. This trawler from the neighboring country was able to recover the body of a sailor amid five-meter waves and strong winds.
The area of the wreck in Newfoundland suffers a storm stronger than usual
The area in which the Galician fishing vessel Villa de Pitanxo has been shipwrecked is known for its atmospheric instability. Adverse weather conditions in the North Atlantic this winter are more intense than usual. This is due to the high pressures located in latitudes further south, where there is a powerful anticyclone from the Azores. These high pressures, which affect the Iberian Peninsula and Northwest Africa, block the polar vortices which, under normal conditions, plummet to the south and which, in previous years, gave rise to winter cold waves in the southernmost regions of Europe.
In this way, the North Atlantic is swept during the boreal winter by trains of storms that originate on the eastern coast of the American continent and circulate over the North Atlantic from west to east. Due to the current high pressure barrier, these atmospheric depressions run through latitudes further north, causing the absence of precipitation in the areas under the influence of the Azores anticyclon, as occurs this winter in the Iberian Peninsula. These storms affect northern and central Europe and move south through the Balkans, Greece or Turkey, countries that have recently been surprised by heavy snowfalls.