Twenty-six people were on board vessel before crew reported it sinking off island of Hokkaidō and authorities lost contact
Nine people, most of them unresponsive, have been found by rescuers after a tour boat sank off Japan’s northern coast with 26 people on board a day earlier.
“As of 11am (0200GMT), coastguard aircraft have rescued four people, local police aircraft rescued four people and a Self Defence Force aircraft rescued one person from waters or rocky coastal areas,” Japan’s coastguard said in a press release on Sunday.
Earlier, local officials and media said those retrieved so far were unresponsive, though the exact condition of all nine was not immediately clear.
Those rescued so far were being taken to medical facilities, with national broadcaster NHK showing at least one person on a stretcher being moved by rescue workers from a helicopter to an ambulance.
Search and rescue operations were continuing for others still missing from the Kazu I, which sent a distress signal at 1.13pm on Saturday saying it was sinking in the frigid waters off off the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō.
Authorities lost contact with Kazu I after the crew reported that water was flooding into the stern of the vessel and it had started to sink, the public broadcaster NHK said.
The crew said those onboard were wearing lifejackets and the boat was keeling at a 30-degree angle, NHK reported. There were 24 passengers, including two children, plus two crew members on board.
Coastguards dispatched five patrol boats and two aircraft in the search, NHK said. It was reportedly about three hours before the first rescuers arrived at the scene.
Average April sea temperatures in the region are reportedly just above freezing.
Yoshihiko Yamada, a Tokai University marine science professor, said the boat was likely to have run aground after being tossed around in high waves and becoming damaged and flooded.
A tour boat of that size usually does not carry a life boat, and passengers may not have been able to jump out of the sinking vessel because its windows are likely to have been closed to shield them from strong winds, Yamada continued.
An official from Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, the company which operates the vessel, told AP he could not give further details as he had to prioritise responding to calls from passengers’ worried families.
In an interview with TBS television, Jun Abe, the vice-chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research, said that cold temperatures and strong winds would place passengers at risk of hypothermia.
According to the tour company’s homepage, the boat holds 65 people. Tours around the Shiretoko Peninsula – a Unesco world heritage site – usually last three hours, according to the operator.
Japan’s borders remain closed to tourists because of Covid regulations, so sightseeing in the country is effectively limited to residents and Japanese citizens.
The Kazu I left the port of Utoro around 10am on Saturday and was expected to return by 1pm, NHK said. Waves had been high and fishing boats in the area had returned to port by mid-morning.
It had been in the area of the Shiretoko Peninsula, in the northern part of Japan’s northernmost main island, and was believed to have been near the Kashinu Falls, NHK said.
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, had been attending a two-day summit in the south of the country but is said to be returning to Tokyo to deal with the incident.
This article was amended on 24 April 2022 because an earlier version referred to Hokkaidō as Japan’s northernmost island, rather than northernmost main island.