MADRID — At least nine sailors perished and four others were still missing Wednesday in rough seas a day after a fishing vessel sank in the South Atlantic some 200 miles (320 kilometers) off the Falkland Islands, Spanish authorities said.
Fourteen crew members made it onto life rafts and were rescued by two other fishing boats that were nearby when the 176-foot (54-meter) Argos Georgia went down Tuesday after being suddenly flooded with water.
Pedro Blanco, representative of Spain's government in the northwest region of Galicia, where several of the sailors were from, said two of the dead were Spaniards.
The pair were the ship's captain, a native of the city of Vigo, and the cook, from the town of Baiona, located just south of Vigo on Spain's northwest coast.
Blanco said the 27-person crew included 10 Spaniards, eight Russians, five Indonesians, two Uruguayans and two Peruvians. He said that his information came from Falkland authorities.
Of the four sailors still missing, Blanco said two were Spaniards but he did not comment on the nationality of the other two. He did not provide details about who the remaining seven dead were.
One of the survivors was Amparo Burguillos, a biologist from southeastern Spain, the regional president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, said on the social media platform X.
Authorities in the Falkland Islands — the British-controlled archipelago that Argentina calls the Malvinas and claims as its own — said they received an emergency signal Monday from the Argos Georgia.
