Ship with 19 fishermen on board sank in the Barents Sea

"At 07:30, information was received about the sinking of the ship "Onega" № MK 0331 (home port of Murmansk) in the Barents Sea near Novaya Zemlya, Arkhangelsk Region. The crew is 19 people. Rescued two people who conducted the search vessel "Voykovo", - TASS quotes TASS message of EMERCOM

According to the ministry, the ship sank due to icing.

"The sunken ship was engaged in fishing, the cause of the flooding was icing", - the ministry specified.

Three ships were sent to the crash site.

The rescued members of the crew of the fishing vessel "Onega" that sank in the Barents Sea were in wetsuits, the captain was not among them, an informed source told Interfax.

“The ship belongs to a private person and is registered in Murmansk. After the crash, the crew gave several distress signals - in automatic and manual modes”, - said the source. It is known that among the rescued - a sailor and a navigator, both citizens of the Russian Federation. The rest of the crew - the dead - are also Russians, TASS specifies.

In total, five vessels were sent to search for the crew.

Aviation will not be involved due to the inappropriate weather.Currently, the Murmansk Transport Prosecutor's Office is conducting an audit, and the results are under the control of the North-West Transport Prosecutor's Office.A criminal case has been opened under the article on violation of traffic safety rules and the operation of railway, air, sea and inland water transport and the metro.Frosts were very strong, there was a strong wind too. Most likely, the ship tilted and turned over, commented a member of the board of the Union of Fishermen of the North, head of the committee on fisheries policy of the Murmansk Regional Duma Gennady Stepakhno in an interview with the Sputnik radio.

"The ship has a terrible state, when all the superstructures of the ship become numb with cold, even all kinds of steel rods, it's necessary to cut away and wallop them, otherwise it may occur overkeel. When the ship is not cut away and walloped , it simply turns over. Even with the bottom up. There were such cases, but very rarely, the whole team usually came out to correct the situation. The weather is really very bad - up to 30 degrees of frost, and additionally with the strong wind", - said Gennady Stepakhno.