UPDATE: All six missing fishermen rescued alive after distress at sea

All six crew mem­bers aboard the fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII have been res­cued alive af­ter spend­ing days in dis­tress at sea, fol­low­ing a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse in­volv­ing a com­mer­cial ves­sel and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued ear­ly this morn­ing, the Min­istry of De­fence con­firmed that all six fish­er­men had been ac­count­ed for and were in rea­son­ably good health, with no re­mark­able in­juries re­port­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the Mar­itime Op­er­a­tions Com­mand Cen­tre re­ceived a re­port at 9 p.m. on Tues­day from the crew of the MV Mar­vel Kite which was en route to the Unit­ed States.

The ves­sel's crew re­port­ed that while trav­el­ling west­ward ap­prox­i­mate­ly 349 nau­ti­cal miles east of Ga­le­o­ta, they spot­ted the fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII ap­pear­ing to be in dis­tress.

The crew of the MV Mar­vel Kite al­tered course and ap­proached the ves­sel, where they found six peo­ple on board. The min­istry said the iden­ti­ties of those res­cued matched those of the crew mem­bers pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed miss­ing.

Fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion that the fish­er­men had been lo­cat­ed, the Mar­itime Op­er­a­tions Com­mand Cen­tre di­rect­ed a Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard ves­sel to ren­dezvous with the com­mer­cial ship.

The min­istry said the Coast Guard ves­sel was tasked with meet­ing the MV Mar­vel Kite to re­ceive the res­cued fish­er­men and trans­port them safe­ly back to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

At the time the re­lease was is­sued, of­fi­cials said the fish­er­men were ex­pect­ed to be brought ashore with­in four hours.

The res­cue brings a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion to what had be­come an anx­ious search for the six-man crew af­ter the fish­ing ves­sel was re­port­ed miss­ing.

Al­though the min­istry did not dis­close the cir­cum­stances that led to the ves­sel be­com­ing strand­ed or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, it said those res­cued ap­peared to have es­caped the or­deal with­out se­ri­ous in­jury.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so ac­knowl­edged the role played by the crew of the MV Mar­vel Kite, whose de­ci­sion to in­ves­ti­gate the dis­tressed ves­sel re­sult­ed in the fish­er­men be­ing found.

Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge ex­pressed the Gov­ern­ment's grat­i­tude to the com­mer­cial ves­sel's crew for their ac­tions.

Sturge said the Gov­ern­ment ap­pre­ci­at­ed the as­sis­tance pro­vid­ed by the MV Mar­vel Kite and in­di­cat­ed that fur­ther up­dates on the in­ci­dent would be re­leased in the com­ing hours.

Rel­a­tives of the six fish­er­men are now ex­pect­ed to be re­unit­ed with their loved ones once they re­turn to shore, end­ing an or­deal that had raised fears for their safe­ty af­ter the ves­sel went miss­ing in the At­lantic.