The search for the victims of a charter fishing boat that capsized off the coast of British Columbia has now been declared a recovery mission, with six people missing and presumed drowned. The vessel went down on Sunday in the Georgia Strait, roughly 20 kilometres southwest of Vancouver International Airport, and the operation that followed has gripped the region. Four people did survive, but officials say the conditions and the time that has passed leave little hope for the rest.
Those four survivors owe their lives to a chance encounter on the water. Brian Angus and Dorothy Stauffer, a couple navigating the area on their sailboat, noticed five people floating on their backs with no boat or debris in sight. They just caught my eye, the couple recalled, adding that the group was lying flat and that had they been even 50 yards away, they would never have seen them. None of the people in the water were wearing life jackets.
The couple immediately radioed a mayday to alert the Coast Guard and then used the dinghy they had been towing to reach those stranded in the frigid water. They managed to pull three people to safety before losing sight of two others. It was a wrenching moment, they said, describing the difficulty of realising they could only save three and that they had no idea so many people were out there in the first place.
In all, around ten people are believed to have been aboard the charter boat when it capsized. Four were ultimately rescued, two of whom remain in critical condition, according to the RCMP. The other six, four men and two women, are missing and presumed drowned, a toll that turned an afternoon on the water into one of the worst marine tragedies the area has seen in recent memory.
Search and rescue crews threw everything they had at the effort, with police vessels and helicopters scouring the strait for hours. Three ferries also joined the search, and passengers aboard described watching everyone do their best to spot anyone still in the water. By Sunday afternoon, the four survivors had been brought to safety, but no further rescues followed.
With the rescue phase over, the focus has shifted to recovery. The RCMP say they are confident that, given their technology and the search conditions, they would have located anyone who had remained alive on the surface. The boat itself is also still missing, believed to have capsized and sunk in very deep water, and an underwater recovery team is expected to use sonar to find it before deciding whether to send divers or an underwater drone.
Many questions remain, including what caused the vessel to sink and why no one on board was wearing a life jacket. The RCMP have taken over the investigation and say their work is focused on the families and on determining what happened to their loved ones. For the couple who pulled three people from the water, the tragedy has become a stark reminder of how important it is to wear a life jacket.