Six-man crew missing after vessel burns at sea; families appeal for help

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

The fam­i­lies of six miss­ing crew mem­bers aboard the fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII are mak­ing an ur­gent re­gion­al ap­peal for as­sis­tance as the search con­tin­ues for the burned ves­sel, which has been miss­ing at sea since Mon­day, Ju­ly 13.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers are ap­peal­ing to me­dia hous­es, mar­itime au­thor­i­ties, and pass­ing com­mer­cial ves­sels to as­sist in lo­cat­ing the ves­sel, which is be­lieved to be drift­ing with­out pow­er or com­mu­ni­ca­tion in wa­ters be­tween Suri­name and French Guiana.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by rel­a­tives, the ves­sel caught fire around 6.30 am on Mon­day, Ju­ly 13, 2026, and has had no con­firmed con­tact or vi­su­al sight­ing since the in­ci­dent.

Rel­a­tives be­lieve the ves­sel may still be adrift, with its move­ment now de­pen­dent on ocean cur­rents and wind con­di­tions.

The ves­sel, St Vin­cent VII, is owned by Re­na­ta En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed and de­part­ed Trinidad on Mon­day, Ju­ly 6, 2026, from the Tardieu Ma­rine yard in Ch­aguara­mas.

The last known lo­ca­tion of the ves­sel was near the mar­itime bor­ders of Suri­name and French Guiana.

Six crew mem­bers were on board: Cap­tain Es­h­war Per­saud, al­so known as “Shanie” — a Guyanese na­tion­al, four Trinida­di­ans and one Vin­cent­ian na­tion­al

Rel­a­tives of miss­ing crew mem­ber Shan­non Joey Mo­hammed, from cen­tral Trinidad, said they are ur­gent­ly seek­ing help from the au­thor­i­ties and ves­sels op­er­at­ing in the re­gion.

“We are des­per­ate­ly plead­ing with re­gion­al me­dia hous­es to broad­cast this in­for­ma­tion im­me­di­ate­ly,” said Aman­da Suraj, Mo­hammed’s wife.

“We ur­gent­ly need in­ter­ven­tion from neigh­bour­ing mar­itime as­sets, pass­ing com­mer­cial ves­sels, and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in French Guiana, Suri­name, and Brazil to de­ploy search and res­cue teams to the area.”

Suraj said the ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the ves­sel has left fam­i­lies des­per­ate for in­for­ma­tion.

The con­cerns were echoed by Gee­ta Al­lis­ter, Mo­hammed’s moth­er-in-law, who said the fam­i­ly has been left with­out an­swers since the ves­sel caught fire.

Al­lis­ter said the fam­i­ly on­ly learned about the in­ci­dent af­ter some­one in the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty con­tact­ed her daugh­ter.

“My daugh­ter, they called my daugh­ter and they told some­body who was pass­ing, who was fish­ing there, our cap­tain on a boat who knew my daugh­ter’s phone num­ber,” she said.

She claimed the com­pa­ny did not di­rect­ly con­tact the fam­i­ly fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

Al­lis­ter said the fam­i­ly re­mains un­cer­tain about the fate of the six men.

“We don’t know if the boat burned right down. We don’t know if they’re out on a life­craft. No­body haven’t giv­en us any in­for­ma­tion.”

“Up to now, no­body’s not do­ing noth­ing. We are beg­ging be­cause time is run­ning out. This hap­pened on Mon­day.”

Mean­while, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Gary Aboud crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as fail­ures in the re­sponse to the in­ci­dent.

Aboud said the in­ci­dent high­lights long­stand­ing con­cerns over safe­ty stan­dards and reg­u­la­tion with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fish­ing sec­tor.

“The Fish­eries Man­age­ment Bill is over 25 years old, and gov­ern­ment af­ter gov­ern­ment have come and gone,” he said, call­ing for stronger pro­tec­tions for sea­far­ers.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion is asked to con­tact Aman­da Suraj, wife of miss­ing crew mem­ber Shan­non Joey Mo­hammed.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Re­na­ta En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed; how­ev­er, calls to the own­er’s cell­phone went unan­swered.