At least 54 crew died and 15 were missing on a Russian fishing trawler after it sank in freezing waters off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Western Pacific Ocean late on Wednesday.
Viktor Klepikov, the coordinating captain of the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky maritime rescue coordination center told Reuters that 63 of the 1324 people who were aboard the Dalniy Vostok were saved with the sea's temperature nearing zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).
Klepikov said that there is an ongoing rescue operation and so far, they are still looking for 15 people. There was no mention of the cause for the sinking yet, but the investigators suppose that the ship might have bumped into a drifting ice, Fox News reported. Meanwhile, Russia's TASS news agency mentioned that a deputy head of the Kamchatka region said that the crew might have bypassed some safety guidelines by exceeding the maximum capacity of cargo storage.
With the speculation that the ship might have collided with a drifting ice, the Russian Interfax news agency cited that this had made the ship sink within 15 minutes.
TASS cited Sergei Khabarov: "According to preliminary information, the shipwreck occurred while hauling a 100-tonne fishing seine."
An Mi-8 helicopter with rescuers and doctors aboard were sent by the Russian Emergencies Ministry on order to deliver medical assistance and transport to the rescued crew members to the hospitals in the city of Magadan. Also, the helicopter was equipped and a telephone hotline was set up for families of the crew.
Russia is said to have a dismal air, road and water safety record which often the cause of accidents. In 2011, an aging, overcrowded tourist boat sank in Russia's Volga River. Over 130 people were killed in this incident.
On board the trawler was 78 Russian nationals, as well as 54 foreign nationals from Ukraine, Vanuatu, Myanmar, and Lithuania.