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Four life rafts without people found after trawler sinks off Chukotka coast

The search for the trawler which sank in the Bering Sea on December, 1 with 62 crew members on board continues

VLADIVOSTOK, December 2. /TASS/. Four inflatable liferafts without people were found on Tuesday in the Bering Sea in the area where a South Korean trawler had sunk.

A Russian fishing ship, which rescued four crewmembers and a Russian specialist from the Korean trawler on Monday, has reported about the four life rafts found in the sea.

The Russian trawler Karolina 77 also recovered the dead body of a Korean fisherman.

The Karolina belongs to the Sakhalin fleet of the Nikkor company. Its Director General Viktor Kiryushin told TASS that the survivors were three Philipinos and a Malay, crewmembers from the South Korean trawler Oryong 501, and a Russian, Alexander Storozhenkov, 27, who was aboard the Korean ship as an observer. All of them were in satisfactory condition. They were rescued by the Karolina on Monday.

Other two crewmembers from the Oryong 501 were rescued by the Magadan-registered trawler Zaliv Zabiyaka.

The Oryong crew numbered 62 people. The fate of 54 of them remained unknown after the trawler sank in the Bering Sea. The search is continuing.

The Oryong 501 was built in 1978 in a shipyard of the Japanese city of Vigo, Spain, and it had flown the Russian flag before 2014.