BEIJING
\nThere were no survivors after a fishing vessel carrying 39 crew members from China, Indonesia and the Philippines capsized last week in the Indian Ocean, according to an initial government probe released on Tuesday.
\nThe Chinese vessel overturned on May 16, with 17 Chinese, 17 Indonesians and five Filipinos on board.
\n\u201cFrom an analysis of the ship\u2019s capsizing… it is preliminarily judged that there are no survivors from the ship,\u201d Beijing\u2019s transport ministry said in an official social media post.
\nThe boat capsized within Australia\u2019s vast search-and-rescue region, 5,000 kilometers (2,700 nautical miles) to the west of Perth, the state capital of Western Australia.
\nChinese state media reported on Monday that seven bodies had been found by Chinese and Sri Lankan rescue vessels, without specifying the nationalities of the dead.
\nAustralia had sent three airplanes and four ships to help in the international search-and-rescue efforts.
\nThe rescue operation has been downgraded to a \u201c48-hour small-scale investigation\u201d as of Tuesday morning, the Chinese transport ministry said.
\nRescuers had trawled an area of around 64,000 square kilometers (18,700 square nautical miles), and \u201cdid not find any sign of survivors,\u201d according to the ministry.
\nThe fishing vessel\u2019s distress beacon was first detected last week as Cyclone Fabian drove waves as high as seven meters (23 feet) and winds as strong as 120 kilometers per hour (75 miles per hour) through the area.
\nRough weather conditions held back rescue efforts, with the Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) in Canberra warning of \u201cchallenging\u201d survival conditions.
\nThe Chinese transport ministry said rescue boats had sounded their horns for one minute of mourning in the early hours of Tuesday, with only seven vessels remaining on the scene by noon.
\n\u201cThe shipwreck\u2019s condition shows no obvious change from the previous day, and is gradually drifting northeast,\u201d the ministry said.
\nThe capsized vessel was owned by Penglai Jinglu Fishery Company, one of China\u2019s major state-run fishing firms.
\nIt was authorized to fish for neon flying squid and Pacific saury, according to the North Pacific Fisheries Commission.
\nIt left Cape Town in South Africa on May 5 for Busan in South Korea, according to the MarineTraffic tracking website, which last located the vessel on May 10 southeast of Reunion, a tiny French island in the Indian Ocean.
\nPenglai Jinglu Fishery also runs squid and tuna fishing operations in international waters, including the Indian Ocean and seas surrounding Latin America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING There were no survivors after a fishing vessel carrying 39 crew members from China, Indonesia and the Philippines capsized last week in the Indian Ocean, according to an initial government probe released on Tuesday. The Chinese vessel overturned on May 16, with 17 Chinese, 17 Indonesians and five Filipinos on board. \u201cFrom an analysis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-333064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n