A Hong Kong-flagged cargo vessel sank off south-western Japan in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and rescue efforts are under way to find some of the 22 crew members.
According to a Bloomberg report, a Japan Coast Guard spokesman said the cargo ship, Jin Tian, had sunk 110 kilometres west of the remote Danjo islands, part of the Nagasaki prefecture, confirming an earlier Kyodo News report.
The Jin Tian crew comprised 14 Chinese nationals and eight from Myanmar who had boarded emergency rafts at 02:40, just six minutes before the ship went under, the coast guard spokesman said. The cause of the vessel sinking is still unknown.
He said the coast guard had received a distress call at 23:15 on Tuesday.
Five Chinese nationals had been rescued so far, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters in Tokyo.
Three civilian ships, including a Japanese research vessel, a Liberian tanker, and a Chinese cargo ship are involved in the rescue operation, while the coast guard and Japan Self-Defense Forces were also en route, local maritime authorities said.
According to vessel data analysed by Bloomberg, the ship loaded cargo at Papua New Guinea in early January and was sailing to South Korea’s Incheon port. The maximum draught of the ship is 7.7 metres and the last reported draught was 8.3 metres, according to data from IHS Markit. The vessel was transporting hardwood.
The data shows that the beneficial owner of the ship is Shenzhen Shekou Shipping Transportation Co, which is listed on the Beijing-based National Equities Exchange and Quotations.
Bloomberg reported that the incident appeared to be the worst since a cargo ship carrying almost 6 000 cattle sank off the coast in 2019, leaving most of the crew of 39 missing at sea. This incident comes during an unusually cold week in Japan.
