Four fishermen who sailed from Kudawella fishery harbour on 21 October and lost all contact with shore during Cyclone Arnab have been found alive in deep water about 200 nautical miles off Pottuvil, the Ministry of Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources says.
All four are in good health. Arrangements were under way on Sunday evening to bring them safely ashore, with basic medical examinations and first aid prepared for their arrival, Hiru News reported at 5.49 p.m. Colombo time.
The crew
The ministry named the four as W. P. Priyantha, P. B. Nimalsiri, L. Y. Naushka and K. H. Savindu, who also owns the vessel.
They left Kudawella on 21 October for what was planned as a four-day fishing trip. They were found eleven days after sailing.
What went wrong
The boat ran into the strong winds and rough seas generated by Cyclone Arnab, and every communication link between the vessel and the shore failed, the ministry said.
That detail closes a question our earlier reporting had to leave open. When the search was first reported on 28 October, Hiru’s account ran to three sentences and did not connect the disappearance to the weather — this desk noted at the time that the link was not asserted by the source. The ministry has now made it explicitly.
The timing had always been suggestive. The vessel sailed on 21 October, a day before fishing and naval communities were warned of the developing low-pressure system that became Arnab. It was already at sea when the first advisories went out, and Arnab reached very severe cyclonic storm strength before making landfall in Andhra Pradesh.
How they were found
Once the Department of Fisheries’ Search and Rescue Coordination Centre was alerted, a special operation was mounted combining the Sri Lanka Navy, the Coast Guard and other fishing boats working in that stretch of sea. The ministry credits that joint effort with locating both the vessel and its crew.
The ministry used the outcome to press two points on fishermen putting to sea: follow the warnings issued by the Department of Meteorology and the Department of Fisheries, and confirm that communication equipment is working properly before leaving port. That advice lands on a day when a red warning is in force for Cyclone Murasu across a large block of the Bay of Bengal.
A separate case
This is not the search for the three fishermen missing off Mullaitivu since 26 October, who sailed aboard boat No. MLT/1742. Different coast, different crew size, different sailing date. Both searches drew on Navy assets, which makes them easy to conflate.
Not reported
The filing does not name the vessel, say when the four were located or by which craft, or state how far they had drifted from their intended grounds. It does not say how they survived eleven days, whether the boat is under its own power, or where they will be landed. Ada Derana also carried the rescue, but the site has returned a CloudFront block to every route this desk can reach for roughly fifty days, so it could not be verified and is not cited here. This report rests on a single source.
