Four fishermen drown in Indian Ocean, 12 survive storm

Mombasa, Kenya: Four fishermen from Tanzania died after drowning during a fishing expedition in Kenyan ocean waters at Gazi Bay area in Kwale County on Monday night.

Twelve other fishermen survived after swimming for several kilometres to the shore.

According to Omar Haki, a survivor who lost two relatives, his countrymen encountered disaster when the propeller of their boat got entangled with a fishing net in rough seas during a storm. The entanglement made navigation of the boat difficult and the crew made a quick decision to yank out the propeller before the vessel capsized.

Three corpses have been retrieved from the ocean.

"The incident happened on Monday, where the heavy waves affected our boat's propeller where the fishing net had been entangled. We were forced to cut off the propeller and jumped in the waters to save our lives," said Haki.

The survivors were forced to abandon the vessel and swim in the darkness for almost an hour towards the shore according to Haki.

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Sheha Hamadi another survivor from the Pemba tribe in Tanzania said yesterday the fishermen have always fished in Kenya waters because they are safe compared to Tanzania's rough seas.

"Also down here there is a lot of fish unlike in our country. But what happened is just an accident," he said.

After the incident, it took almost ten hours of looking for the missing bodies and luckily three were found with one still being searched for as we were going to press.

Athman Simba who was among the divers that found the three bodies said two of the bodies were found lying together with one of them in bad shape.

"We spotted the bodies in the deep sea but it was not an easy task knowing that the sea was still not good," he told journalists.

Mr Juma Said who is the Gazi Beach Management Unit (BMU) noted that the Pemba people are thought to be experts in fishing and that it is why they are given boats by locals to go and fish in the deep seas.

He said that they are good fishermen who have always boosted the economy of the area and that the death was just a usual calamity.

"It is not the first time such deaths have happened as they always do and to us its just like other accidents," he said.

Kinondo chief Ali Riga said that before fishermen from Tanzania are allowed to fish in Kenya they are usually cleared through BMU officials.

"There are foreigners who stay here and others who just come but all of them are registered before fishing in our waters," he said.