The wreck of the Spanish trawler Villa de Pitanxo, which sank off the coast of Canada in February 2022 and left 21 people dead or missing, has been located on the seabed, authorities and victims’ families said on Monday.
“The Villa de Pitanxo wreck was found in the area where everything pointed to it,” Spain’s Transport Ministry said in a statement.
The boat was “found very close to where the ship’s automatic identification system (AIS) gave its last signals,” the ministry added.
The “Villa de Pitanxo”, which left the Galician port of Marín (northwest Spain), sank with 24 crew members on February 15, 2022 450 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, east of Canada.
Only three seamen (two Spaniards and one Ghanaian) were rescued from this sinking, the worst tragedy for the Spanish fishing sector in almost forty years. Nine bodies were recovered, twelve people were missing.
According to the authorities, a robot sent by the ship that discovered the “Villa de Pitanxo” was able to film the wreck. The images will help investigators figure out the circumstances under which the boat sank.
“Images obtained from the rubble will be included in the investigation file” currently in the hands of the judiciary, while the three survivors maintain different versions of the accident, the ministry said.
The spokeswoman for the families of the fishermen, María José de Pazo, assured TVE that “the location of the boat was important for the investigation, but also from an emotional point of view for the families”.
When asked about the families’ possible hopes of finding the bodies of the 12 missing, she admitted “a lot of time has passed”.
The captain of the “Villa de Pitanxo” and his nephew claim that the boat sank after being adrift in very rough seas as a result of an engine failure.
But the other survivor, a Ghanaian seaman, says the net got stuck on the seabed and the captain refused to cut it lest he lose the catch.
The owner and the captain are being investigated for manslaughter.