Three people on board an inflatable catamaran in the Coral Sea off the northeast coast of Australia have been rescued after the vessel was damaged from several shark attacks, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said yesterday.
Satellite photos and a video on the AMSA Web site showed a large part of the stern of the yacht torn away.
“The vessel departed from Vanuatu and was bound for Cairns [Australia] when contact was established. Both hulls of the vessel have been damaged following several shark attacks,” the AMSA said in a statement.
Photo: Australian Maritime Safety Authority via AP
Rescue crews responded to an emergency positioning beacon registered to the Tion, a 9m inflatable catamaran on a round-the-world expedition, early yesterday morning. The yacht was about 835km southeast of Cairns.
The AMSA requested the assistance of a Panamanian-flagged ship, the vehicle-carrying Dugong Ace, which conducted the rescue. The three passengers — two Russian and one French citizen, aged between 28 and 64 — are due to arrive in Brisbane today, the AMSA said.
A rescue plane also flew to the scene.
“The three males were very happy to be rescued, and they’re all healthy and well,” said Joe Zeller, duty manager at the ASMA Canberra response center.
Zeller said that a journey from the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu to Australia on such a vessel would usually take two to three weeks.
Zeller said the GPS-encoded emergency beacon had saved the men’s lives by allowing rescuers to quickly pinpoint their location and mount an appropriate rescue.
He said there were many reasons why a shark might attack a boat.
“However, the motivations of these sharks is unclear,” Zeller said.
Anna Kosikhina, a spokesperson for the men, said that their voyage was aimed at promoting Russia and Siberia, and began two years ago.
“They were all intact. Nobody is hurt,” she said. “The only thing is that the balloons of the inflatable catamaran were blown away.”
This was not the first accident on the voyage, Kosikhina said, with the steering device of a previous vessel failing during a previous leg from Chile to Easter Island.
The crew continued the expedition on an inflatable catamaran by the same manufacturer that had been stored on the island for several years.
Additional reporting by AP
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