Five days after a devastating fire disabled a Trinidad and Tobago-registered yellowfin tuna fishing vessel in the remote border waters of Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil, families and loved ones of the six-person crew have issued a desperate plea for stepped-up search and rescue operations across the region.
The ill-fated vessel, owned by local firm Renata Enterprises Limited, departed Chaguaramas’ Tardieu Marine yard on July 6 with a multinational crew on a planned fishing voyage. Among the six people on board are four nationals of Trinidad and Tobago, one sailor from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and captain Eshwar “Shanie” Persaud, a Guyanese national. One of the Trinidadian crew members is Shannon Mohammed, whose wife Amanda Suraj has spearheaded the public appeal for assistance.
Per family accounts, the fire broke out at approximately 6:30 a.m. on July 13 as the vessel operated near the overlapping maritime boundaries of Suriname and French Guiana. In the immediate aftermath of the blaze, the boat lost all power and onboard communications systems, cutting off all contact with the outside world. To date, no visual sightings of the vessel or crew have been confirmed, leaving families in limbo waiting for any update on their loved ones’ fates.
Experts and family members say the disabled vessel is now adrift, carried by prevailing winds and ocean currents across the vast expanse of water between the three South American coastal nations. In an urgent interview with Trinidad and Tobago’s *Express* newspaper on Saturday, Suraj made a broad plea for coordinated action from all stakeholders in the region, calling on local governments, coast guard agencies, maritime authorities, commercial shipping operators and regional media outlets to join the search effort.
“We are desperately pleading with regional media houses to broadcast this information immediately,” Suraj stated. “We urgently need intervention from neighboring maritime assets, passing commercial vessels, and local authorities in French Guiana, Suriname, and Brazil to deploy search and rescue teams to the area.”
Suraj added that no new information about the crew’s location has emerged since the vessel’s last confirmed contact on July 13, and she has urged all vessels transiting the affected area to maintain a sharp lookout for any sign of the drifting fishing boat or its crew. She also called on international maritime search and rescue organizations to expand their search parameters to cover the full area the vessel is expected to have drifted to, emphasizing that the crew’s families hold out hope for a safe rescue. The expanding appeal comes as time grows increasingly critical for the missing sailors, who have now been adrift without support for five full days.