The Sri Lanka Navy brought 25 Indonesian fishermen safely ashore at the Port of Colombo on Thursday evening, completing a multinational rescue that began when their trawler capsized in the Indian Ocean two days earlier.
The men were crew aboard the Indonesian fishing trawler KM Garuda Jaya VI, which capsized on 22 September in waters inside the Australian Search and Rescue Region, leaving the crew in distress at sea.
The merchant vessel MV Moonstone located and recovered all 25 survivors from the water, then alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Colombo.
Acting on that alert, the Navy deployed two naval craft to take the survivors off the merchant ship and carry them to shore. All 25 were landed at the Port of Colombo on the evening of 24 September, where they received humanitarian assistance.
The fishermen were subsequently handed over to the Embassy of Indonesia in Sri Lanka for onward arrangements.
Neither newsroom reported injuries among the rescued crew, and neither gave a figure for how many had originally been aboard the trawler.
Context
MRCC Colombo coordinates search-and-rescue responses across a large area of the northern Indian Ocean under international maritime convention. Because that zone borders the Australian Search and Rescue Region, distress calls originating far from Sri Lankan waters are routinely routed through Colombo when a merchant ship in the area makes the first recovery.
Handing rescued foreign nationals to their diplomatic mission is standard practice once they are landed.
