TOKYO — The Japanese Coast Guard said Sunday rescue helicopters found four of 26 people from a tour boat missing in frigid waters off northern Japan since the day before, but their condition was unknown.
The four people were found near the tip of the Shiretoko peninsula, but the coast guard said it could not confirm whether they were rescued alive. NHK public television said they were unconscious.
Footage on NHK showed one of the rescued people arriving by helicopter and being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher, with rescuers holding up blue plastic shields for privacy.
The boat carrying 24 passengers and two crew members had disappeared after sending out a distress call on Saturday, saying it had filled with water and was beginning to sink.
Sunday’s rescue came after nearly 19 hours of intense search involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers. The coast guard said the search continued overnight.
The 19-tonne Kazu 1 made an emergency call in the early afternoon, saying the ship’s bow had been flooded and was beginning to sink and list as it sailed off the western coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula, near the northern Hokkaido island, the coast guard said.
Since then, the tour boat has lost contact, according to the coast guard. She said the ship was carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew members.
Average April sea temperatures in Shiretoko National Park are just above freezing.
An official with the ship’s operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, said he could not comment because he had to respond to calls from concerned families of passengers.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was attending a two-day summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan, canceled his program for a second day and returned to Tokyo. He told reporters in the early hours of Sunday that he instructed officials “to do everything possible for the rescue.”
The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but experts suspect the ship ran aground and was damaged.
High waves and strong winds were observed in the area around noon, according to a local fishing cooperative. Japanese media reports said the fishing boats had returned to port before noon due to bad weather.
NHK said there was a warning for high waves of up to 3 meters (9 feet).
The crew of a tour boat belonging to another operator told NHK that they warned about rough seas when they saw the crew of the Kazu 1 and told them not to leave. He also said the same ship ran aground last year and suffered a crack in the bow.
Yoshihiko Yamada, a professor of marine science at Tokai University, said the ship likely ran aground after high waves tossed and damaged it, flooded it and probably sank. A tour boat of that size usually doesn’t carry a lifeboat, and passengers may not be able to escape a rapidly sinking ship with the windows probably closed to protect them from strong winds.
In an interview with TBS Elevision, Yamada said that there was also a small chance that the boat had been hit by a whale.
The cold temperature and strong wind could cause hypothermia and put passengers in severe survival conditions, according to Jun Abe, vice president of the Aquatic Rescue and Survival Research Society. “It’s a very severe condition, especially when they’re wet,” Abe told TBS.
According to the operator’s website, the tour lasts around three hours and offers panoramic views of the western coast of the peninsula and includes possible sightings of animals such as whales, dolphins and brown bears. The national park is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is famous for being the southernmost region to view drifting sea ice.
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