U.S. Coast Guard video courtesy Air Station Barbers Point.
HONOLULU – Forty-two people are safe after abandoning ship approximately 1,800 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands, Thursday.
Crewmembers successfully dewatered fishing vessel American Eagle using equipment dropped by an HC-130 Hercules airplane crew from Air Station Barbers Point. Thirty crewmembers are currently aboard the fishing vessel cleaning and assessing damage after a fire broke out Wednesday.
AMVER vessel Fong Seong 888, a Tuvalu-flagged oil tanker, remains on-scene to provide additional support.
American Eagle’s sister ship, American Victory, is en route and scheduled to arrive in three days to relieve the Fong Seong 888.
The Hercules airplane crew is scheduled to arrive at Air Station Barbers Point Thursday evening. More information will follow regarding media availability for Hercules airplane crew.
AMVER, sponsored by the United States Coast Guard, is a unique, computer-based, and voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities to arrange for assistance to persons in distress at sea.
With AMVER, rescue coordinators can identify participating ships in the area of distress and divert the best-suited ship or ships to respond. Vessels send periodic position reports to the AMVER center until arriving at their port of call. This data is able to project the position of each ship at any point during its voyage. In an emergency, any rescue coordination center can request this data to determine the relative position of AMVER ships near the distress location. On any day there are over 5,000 ships available to carry out search and rescue services. Visit http://www.amver.com to learn more about this unique worldwide search and rescue system.
The previous press release can be found at https://goo.gl/JMuZyt.