Maputo, 30 Aug (AIM) – Five fishermen are missing following a shipwreck on Saturday afternoon in Mitange, Chinde district, in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia.
According to the Zambezia maritime administrator, Augusto Dongo, of the eight people on the traditional fishing boat, five are reported missing while the other three have turned up alive and are in the town of Mitange.
“It was a group of eight fishermen and they were approached at the time by the local community fishing council, who told them not to put out to sea but they didn’t want to comply with that advice. So, they travelled from Mitange towards Olinda. On the way, they came across a system that created a whirlpool. They couldn’t stop it and the boat started to take on water,” Dongo said, He added that work is continuing on the ground to clarify the case.
Mozambique, he said, is suffering from the El Niño weather system, which causes sudden climatic changes that are very frequent in areas with large bodies of water, and communities have not yet realized how this system works.
“This has led the maritime authority to explain it on the ground to groups of fishermen and various communities in order to avoid similar scenarios in the near future. This system works like a whirlpool and when it hits a certain stretch of water, it causes shipwrecks. We’ve been working hard with local organizations to disseminate information about this” Dongo said.
(AIM)
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