Vietnam authorities on Monday halted using planes to look for the Bulk Jupiter, which sank off the southern city of Vung Tau last Friday, leaving 16 of its 19 Philippine crewmembers missing, the National Committee for Search and Rescue said. The information was released by Major General Nguyen Van Binh, deputy chief of the committee’s Secretariat and deputy head of the Rescue and Salvage Department under the Ministry of Defense. Over the past three days, search and rescue forces from the committee and the Vietnam People’s Army have mobilized dozens of ships – including fishing boats – to search for the sunken ship and the missing sailors, with the support of many foreign vessels, the official said.  Immediately after receiving a report about the incident, the committee has since last Friday also deployed many planes to search for the sunken Bahamas-flagged ship and the missing sailors in a vast sea area off Vung Tau. However, except for saving one crewmember, the ship’s chef, Rojas Angelito Capindo, 43, and recovering two bodies drifting at sea, one of which was the ship’s captain, Andrin Ronel Acueza, 46, while the other was the third Officer, Dinoy Jerome Maquilang, 23, the joint rescue forces have yet to find any more sailors or signs of the sunken ship, the official said. Meanwhile, bad weather hampered the search on Monday, Pham Hien, vice president of the Vung Tau Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, which is leading the search, told Reuters. “The weather is very bad with high waves and strong winds,” he said. The committee has therefore decided to temporarily stop the deployment of planes, Major General Binh said. Those ships that have been mobilized to search for the sunken vessel and its missing sailors over the past three days have also been ordered to resume their previous normal operations, but they are also asked to continue watching and be ready to take part in rescue and salvage activities when requested, Binh said.A crew list of the sunken ship is available here.The Bulk Jupiter was in distress about 150 nautical miles off Vung Tau while transporting 46,400 metric tons of bauxite from Malaysia to China last Friday morning.

Chef Rojas confirmed there were 19 crew members on board the missing ship, and all were Filipinos. The accident happened to the ship at about 6:00-7:00 am on Friday morning. He told rescuers that when the ship suddenly capsized and sank, most of the crewmembers were inside the its holds.

“As it was carrying such a heavy load, it could have sunken rapidly after capsizing, and this may be the reason why the crew had not issued SOS signals,” Major General Binh commented. The emergency signals the Vietnam Maritime Search and Rescue Coordination Center (Vietnam MRCC) received on Friday did not come from the crew but from the buoy system on board that automatically sent out signals when it contacted water, the official explained.        Given the direction of winds and waves in the area where the ship was in distress, if objects belonging to the ship were drifting at sea, they might have moved to the waters of Indonesia, so Vietnamese competent agencies have asked their Indonesian counterparts to coordinate in the search for signs of the ship as well as the missing sailors, the official said.

On Sunday, vessel SAR 413 handed over the role of directing rescue efforts on the scene to the Vietnam Coast Guard’s ship 4034 and returned to Vung Tau, taking ashore the rescued chef and the two bodies. The two bodies will be sent to Ho Chi Minh City before being repatriated to the Philippines, said Colonel Tran Cong Hieu, a Vietnamese border guard commander.

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