8 Crew Members Missing After 2 Ships Nelayaan Accident On The Blitar Coast

Joint SAR officers monitored the condition of two fishing boats from Prigi Trenggalek who were stranded on Gayasan Beach, Bakung, Blitar, East Java, Thursday (7/9/2023) (ANTARA/HO - capture the video dock screen. Joint SAR)

A total of eight crew members (ABK) were reported missing after two fishing boats departing from the Nusantara Prigi Fisheries Port, Trenggalek, had a sea accident due to a storm and were stranded on Gayasan Beach, the southern coast of Blitar Regency, East Java.

The Coordinator of the Trenggalek SAR Post, Yoni Fariza, said the sea accident incident in the southern waters of the Blitar-Tulungagung border occurred on Wednesday (6/9) at around 20.00 WIB.

"Temporary information due to bad weather," said Yoni, quoted by ANTARA, Thursday, September 7.

In addition to the eight missing crew members, 15 other crew members who managed to survive and are now being evacuated to land.

At that time, 23 crew members were looking for fish in the waters of Gayasan using two boats, namely the motorboat Mandala and Jonson's small boat.

They departed from Prigi Harbor on Wednesday (6/9) at around 16.00 WIB and arrived in Blitar waters at around 20.00 WIB. "At that time they got a fish catch of approximately 500 kilograms," he said.

One hour later, the weather suddenly worsened and was foggy. Actually, he said, the two fishing groups were about to return to Prigi by walking along the coast. However, due to thick fog, their visibility was limited, so suddenly their ship was hit by the waves.

"Towards the early hours of yesterday, bad and foggy weather conditions made visibility limited," he added.

Their boat was hit by waves five times and once the blow to their boat broke. Their boat was hit by another wave and stranded to the beach approximately 300 meters from the shoreline.

In that incident the aircraft carrier was affected by a number of damages, while Jonson's boat behind it capsized.

15 surviving crew members, he said, immediately pulled over and at around 05.00 WIB met farmers in the fields and asked for help, who were then taken to the nearest health center because of their average condition of hunger and coldness, as well as a number of injuries from the impact.

From the information gathered, the eight crew members were from the Mandala aircraft carrier, four people and the Konson ship were four people. The mandala ship was headed by Sugianto, while the ship was later headed by Maimo.