Search Resumes for Three Fishermen Missing near Bulgaria’s Southern Coast

The search for the fishing vessel with three people on board, which vanished east of cape Maslen Nos, is resuming this morning with an expanded effort. Alongside the official teams, eight groups of volunteers are joining the operation, patrolling the coastline between Sozopol and Primorsko. A drone will also be deployed to scan hard-to-reach areas.

Among the volunteers is one of the captain’s sons. He said the family is clinging to the hope that his father and his 25-year-old brother managed to survive and are waiting in a life raft.

The vessel left port yesterday to fish for turbot, despite difficult conditions at sea. At the time, winds were reaching around 20 metres per second and the sea was heavily agitated. When the boat’s signal disappeared from radar systems, a large-scale search was launched involving rescue services, the Border Police and the military. The operation was halted late in the evening because of darkness.

Mariners say the circumstances of the disappearance are particularly alarming. Sailor Zdravko Vassilev explained on television that there is a discrepancy of two to three minutes between the data from the AIS tracking system and the coastal radars. According to him, such an abrupt loss of signal is highly unusual, but there is still hope that, if an incident occurred, the crew had just enough time to deploy a life raft.

Vassilev clarified that the coastal radars are monitored by the Border Police, while the AIS system continuously transmits a vessel’s position in real time. He stressed that the strong winds could have pushed the crew far out to sea and appealed for an aerial search to be carried out. He also called on the Maritime Administration to issue an alert for missing persons as quickly as possible.

As daylight returns, both volunteers and authorities continue to comb the area, hoping for any sign of the missing fishermen.