The authority informed that the search for 29 fishermen missing in the Pacific Ocean for at least two weeks switched Sunday to remote islands with no modern means of communication after extensive air sweeps proved fruitless. The fishing boat of Taiwan was capsized last week, few crew members were rescues but many of them went missing.
According to the authority aerial searches have covered a vast 54,000 square kilometers (21,000 square miles) since the burnt out hulk of the Taiwanese fishing boat Ta Ching 21 was found abandoned near the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati on November 9. New Zealand Rescue Coordination Centre spokesman Ross Henderson told that there is still no sign of anything. He informed that a New Zealand Air Force Orion completed more than 30 hours of searching the area.
It is observed that the last radio transmission from the vessel was a satellite phone call from the captain to his wife in Taiwan on October 28. Henderson opined that Fiji, which is coordinating the search, was now sending officials to islands north of Kiribati, sparsely inhabited by indigenous tribes with no modern means of communication. He added that there might a chance that any of the crew had come ashore.
Captain Mike Pearson opined that they would liaise with the search controllers in Fiji to determine the plan from this point on. He told that complete check of the search area has been down but with no success.
