Tugboat Flips Suddenly While Changing Course: Coast Guard Focuses on Mooring Line Connection

[Anchor]

The search for missing crew members from a tugboat that capsized off the coast of Busan continues to face difficulties. Footage of the accident has been released for the first time, and the Coast Guard preliminarily believes the vessel was flipped over by its mooring line.

Reporter Choi Han-sol from KNN.

[Reporter]

This is closed-circuit television footage from a container ship capturing the tugboat that sank in the waters near Oryukdo Island, Busan.

Vessel A, which was towing the container ship from the front, suddenly and instantly flips over while changing its course.

It capsized without any collision with the merchant vessel.

The Coast Guard is focusing on the possibility that the tugboat got caught in the mooring line or was knocked over by the recoil of the line during the turn.

[Lee Kyeong-yeol, Head of Investigation Division, Busan Coast Guard: We presume it capsized due to the mooring line during the process of turning to starboard (right), but we need to comprehensively analyze various objective evidences.]

The search for the missing has been facing setbacks.

While one person was found dead and another was rescued, the search for the remaining six has made little progress.

[Sung Dae-hoon, Chief of Busan Coast Guard: (At night), we deployed 174 illumination flares and intensively searched the waters near the accident site. However, visibility was only about 30 centimeters, so we were unable to locate the missing persons.]

The Coast Guard plans to conduct a joint search by expanding the search area with the Navy and other agencies.

However, the search faces limitations as the vessel has sunk to a depth greater than 60 meters, which is the limit for human divers to enter directly.

The Coast Guard stated that because the sinking point is too deep at 87 meters for divers to directly enter the hull, they plan to conduct an underwater search using the Navy's unmanned underwater vehicles.

Vessel A sank in waters 9 kilometers east of Oryukdo Island and has since drifted about 3.7 kilometers northeast due to strong currents, meaning future weather conditions and ocean currents are expected to be major variables in the search.

(Video footage by: Kim Tae-yong, Jeon Jae-hyun / KNN)

Choi Han-sol, KNN
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.