4 Subic fishers go missing near Scarborough Shoal

SMALL BOAT TO MOTHERSHIP These fishermen from Zambales province lift a motorized service boat to their main fishing vessel, called the mother boat, after a few hours of line fishing using the small boat, in this photo taken at the West Philippine Sea last May. This is the kind of small boat that the four fishers each boarded when they went missing on Nov. 27 near Scarborough Shoal. —Joanna Rose Aglibot

SUBIC, ZAMBALES, Philippines — Four fishermen from this town in Zambales province went missing while they were approximately 74 kilometers (40 nautical miles) northeast of Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) last week.

In a phone interview on Sunday, Cristina Bausin, 42, said her partner Renato Celistra, the boat operator and skipper of FB Reincris, and 12 crew members left Barangay Calapandayan of this town on Nov. 20 aboard Reincris and headed for their traditional fishing ground close to Scarborough, locally known as Bajo de Masinloc or Panatag Shoal, a voyage that would usually take 24 hours.

Bausin, citing the radio message she received from Celistra, said that after almost a week of fishing, four of the crew members went missing on Nov. 27, a Wednesday.

READ: PH summons Chinese envoy to protest Bajo de Masinloc baselines

The four fishermen—brothers Richard Recalde and Reymond Recalde, Daniel Sabido and Anthony Tadeo—left their mother vessel and separately boarded four small motorized boats to catch fish using hook and line, a method locally called “nangawil,” but they failed to return, said Bausin.

Bausin said her partner and the eight remaining crew members were still at the WPS as of Sunday to continue conducting their own search for their missing companions.

Notice

As of Sunday, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has still to launch its own search operation for the missing fishermen.

However, on Saturday, Cmdr. Euphraim Jayson Diciano, chief of the PCG station in Zambales, issued notice for all vessels and fisherfolk who happened to be anywhere near Panatag Shoal or at sea lanes along the WPS to be on the lookout for possible sightings of the fishermen.

Other fishermen from Subic town, who were able to return from the WPS after fishing at the same time as Celistra and his crew, said the weather was not good during that time that their fellow fishermen went missing.

They speculated that it was possible that the missing men had a hard time returning to their mother boat due to big waves.

The shoal’s lagoon has long been serving as a shelter from storms and bad weather conditions by Filipinos and others from neighboring countries who fish at the WPS.

Panatag Shoal is located within the country’s 370-kilometer (200 nautical miles) exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea (SCS).

However, since 2012, it has become off-limits to Filipino fishers, with Chinese coast guard personnel and its militia harassing fisherfolk and other vessels attempting to enter the lagoon, claiming the shoal as part of its supposed historical claim over most of the entire area.

The Philippines refers to the waters within its EEZ as the WPS.

In July 2016, the Netherlands-based international arbitral tribunal adjudicating the Philippines’ case against China in the dispute over SCS ruled that China’s claim had no basis, as it upheld the Philippines’ sovereign rights and jurisdiction in its EEZ. China has continued to refuse to recognize the ruling.