Stellar Daisy Search Update: Cargo Ship’s Crew Missing In Atlantic Ocean

More than three days after the cargo ship the Stellar Daisy was believed to have sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, most of its crew was still missing. Despite a multi-country search for the downed freighter, only two of the 24 people aboard the ship had been rescued as of Monday.

The South Korean cargo ship was carrying 260,000 tons of iron ore from Brazil to China when it disappeared an estimated 2,300 miles off the coast of Uruguay. The freighter is believed to have ripped in two and sank sometime Friday. Of the 16 Filipino and eight South Korean crew members, only two were found clinging to a life raft Saturday.

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“The more hours pass, the less the chances are of finding them,” Gaston Jaunsolo, a spokesman for the Uruguayan navy, told Reuters.

The freighter was built in 1993, according to MarineTraffic.com. The South Korean company that owned the Stellar Daisy, Polaris Shipping, deployed merchant ships to aid Brazilian and Argentinian planes and ships in the search for the crew. Aside from the two rescued crew members, the search only turned up the remains of an oil spill, some debris and empty lifeboats, according to the Yonhap news agency.

It’s unclear what, exactly, caused the ship to sink, though one of the rescued crew members said they alerted Polaris Shipping when the freighter began taking on water. Some reports speculated that the heavy cargo had caused the ship to lose stability and sink. If heavy cargo like iron ore isn’t adequately secured it can shift quickly, causing a ship like the Stellar Daisy to go down, according to MarineInsight.com.

“It was not a complicated day for navigation,” Jaunsolo told AFP news.

More than 300 miles of ocean had been searched as of Sunday, according to the Yonhap news agency, with efforts continuing as the week began. Brazil was expected to deploy a destroyer equipped with a rescue helicopter alongside three merchant ships from Polaris Shipping, all expected to arrive at the scene Tuesday.