Deaths of fishing crew members a maritime tragedy

The Mar­itime Union says the con­firmed death of three Indone­sian crew mem­bers miss­ing after sink­ing of a fish­ing ves­sel Oyang 70 is a tragedy.

The Kore­an-owned Oyang 70 sank ear­ly this morn­ing approx­i­mate­ly 400 nau­ti­cal miles off the Ota­go coast.

In addi­tion to the three deaths, three crew mem­bers are still miss­ing and 45 crew mem­bers were picked up by anoth­er fish­ing ves­sel the Amal­tal Atlantis. Res­cue oper­a­tions are under­way to find the miss­ing men.

The Oyang 70 depart­ed from Dunedin on the morn­ing of 14 August.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says the sink­ing is a mar­itime dis­as­ter and ini­tial reports that the ves­sel had cap­sized in good weath­er con­di­tions were extreme­ly dis­turb­ing.

The Mar­itime Union would be work­ing with the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers Fed­er­a­tion to pro­vide any assis­tance it could to crew mem­bers, and also to find out why the sink­ing occurred.

At 38 years of age the Oyang 70 was one of the old­est fish­ing ves­sels in New Zealand waters.

The sink­ing comes just a few months after two over­seas crew mem­bers died from asphyx­i­a­tion aboard the bulk car­ri­er TPC Welling­ton in the Port of Whangarei in May 2010.

Mr Fleet­wood says the Union has encoun­tered ongo­ing prob­lems expe­ri­enced by over­seas crew on mer­chant and fish­ing ves­sels, includ­ing health and safe­ty prob­lems.

Oyang 70 is owned by Sajo Oyang Cor­po­ra­tion, a com­pa­ny incor­po­rat­ed in Korea, and is reg­is­tered on the Kore­an Ship­ping Reg­istry and flies the Kore­an flag.

Oyang 70 has oper­at­ed in New Zealand waters since the 1980s. It was con­vict­ed of spilling oil in Nel­son har­bour last year.

It is char­tered by South­ern Storm (2007) Ltd who have offices in Christchurch.