Hope for finding any of the remaining boat passengers alive — including an American teacher — is fading as the search enters its seventh day and Coast Guard planes are temporarily out of service.
“We located the body of a pregnant female floating 80 miles east of Majuro using radar,” said Coast Guard Lt. Andrew Taszkiewicz Thursday night.
Taszkiewicz and a Coast Guard search and rescue crew were on board a C-130 plane and dropped a buoy near the body to help a recovery vessel locate the body in daylight.
Marshall Islands emergency response official Junan Nimoto said the patrol vessel Lomor was to be dispatched at first light Friday to attempt to pick up the body of Baby Kaiko, who was reported to be seven months pregnant when she departed on an overloaded 13-foot boat that capsized in heavy seas sometime after departing from Arno Atoll on Friday afternoon.
The body of high school student Anwel Anwel was brought back to Majuro Thursday morning and buried later that day after being found by one of about a dozen vessels that joined in an intensive search for survivors Wednesday.
The driver of the small outboard engine boat, Kiotak Abitlom Joream, and American WorldTeach volunteer teacher James de Brueys have yet to be found.
Local fishermen and scuba divers with experience in search and rescue operations give them little chance of surviving after seven days in the ocean. The boat had no lifejackets or safety equipment on board.
Joream was bringing a cooler of freshly caught fish to Majuro, the capital, to sell and de Brueys was to join with other American teachers for a Thanksgiving dinner last Friday night. The journey between Arno and Majuro is normally a one-to-two-hour boat ride. But high winds and heavy surf turned what on other days would have been a routine boat ride into a disaster.
The 13-foot boat they were in was found Tuesday overturned and partly submerged.
Although the Coast Guard has not officially called off the aerial search, engine problems have halted further Coast Guard rescue efforts. One of the two C-130 search and rescue planes on station in the Marshall Islands left for Honolulu for maintenance work late Thursday while a second plane developed engine problems while on a search mission Thursday morning and is currently grounded at Majuro awaiting repair parts to arrive. The earliest these parts are expected to arrive is Sunday, said U.S. officials.
