The Department of Transport (DoT) will set up a marine court of enquiry to establish the cause of the sinking of the fishing vessel, FV Lepanto, which claimed the lives of 11 crew in May.
This comes after the South African Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) earlier submitted a draft report to Transport Minister, Barbara Creecy, and Deputy Minister of Transport, Mkhuleko Hlengwa, calling for a court of enquiry to be established.
DoT national spokesman Collen Msibi said in a statement that the Samsa draft report was scheduled to be finalised and released before the end of the year.
“The minister and deputy minister have requested the Samsa board to urgently finalise the report with its legal team. They have also instructed the department to begin a process of establishing a marine court of enquiry to further pursue an investigation and bring the report to finality,” Msibi said.
“Creecy and Hlengwa have expressed their strong desire to release the final preliminary report before the end of the year,” he added.
The 38.6-metre-long, 63-year-old FV Lepanto, sank on May 17, claiming the lives of 11 crew who were believed to have remained trapped onboard. The vessel reportedly sank rapidly, within about five minutes after a sudden heavy listing. Nine crew members were rescued.
The sinking was one of a handful of sea incidents involving commercial fishing vessels during the year and from which approximately 70 crew members in total were successfully rescued and evacuated.
The incidents included a sister commercial vessel to the FV Lepanto, the FV Armana, which reportedly had been the first responder to issue a mayday call regarding the sinking and which rescued the nine surviving crew members.
Five months later, the FV Armana reportedly also caught fire and sank in October while out at sea in a location some 60 nautical miles offshore from Gansbaai on the Atlantic Ocean. All of its 20 crew members were successfully rescued and transported back to Cape Town.
The two sister commercial fishing vessels’ incidents were interspersed between two others, the grounding of the FV Elke M in January, near St Francis Bay on the Eastern Cape coast (Indian Ocean), and the sinking of the FV Oceana Amethyst approximately 20 nautical miles west north-west of Slangkoppunt on the Atlantic Ocean in the Western Cape.
All crew on board both vessels were successfully rescued and evacuated.
