MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Jigger and trawler collide in Argentina's mile 201; crew rescued and heading for Montevideo

This time of the year is squid season in the South Atlantic and the area experiences and intense traffic of licensed and non licenses jiggers

A Chinese flagged jigger sank after colliding with a Spanish flagged trawler on Friday morning to the northwest of the Falkland Islands. All thirty crew members have been rescued by other fishing vessels, and are heading for Montevideo, according to the latest reports from the Argentine Coast Guard. The collision involved the jigger V Zhong Yuan Yu 11 and the trawler Pesca Vaqueiro, which went undamaged.

According to Vigo sources Galician trawlers Ivan Nores, Capricorn and Playa Pesmar Dos were also involved in rescue operations. Pesca Vaqueiro reported she was heading to Montevideo with the rescued crew.

At this stage the reasons for the collision are unknown and the Argentine Coast Guard have a patrol vessel GC Mantilla in the area while an aircraft has been overflowing. A radio beacon and a couple of rafts were recovered at the incident area.

“We don't know the causes of the accident, circumstances are under analysis but the Chinese jigger effectively sank where it was positioned”, added the official. Apparently there was no loss of life since the Chinese jigger since the crew had time to abandon ship which finally went down.

The incident was detected by Maritime Control in early morning Friday via a satellite alarms of the collision, which was located at some nine nautical miles from Argentina's EEZ, in a parallel line from Comodoro Rivadavia.

The area of the collision is known as mile 201, in the fringes of Argentine EEZ and during the squid season is packed with Asian jiggers, mainly from China.