The Coast Guard has suspended its search for three boaters whose vessel sank Wednesday off the coast of Washington. One other boater was rescued.
The Coast Guard called off its search near Everett at 10:45 p.m. Wednesday after multiple boat and air crews had searched 187 square miles for the three missing people.
The Everett Police Department posted on Facebook that it was still searching for the boaters’ bodies. Authorities did not identify the missing boaters or the survivor.
The four boaters were shrimping hundreds of feet offshore from a park in Everett when their boat began to sink at about 1:08 p.m., police said. Good Samaritans on a passing boat saved one of them, a man in his 50s who was uninjured.
The other three — a man in his 60s, a woman in her 40s and a man in his 20s — have not been found, police said.
Wednesday was the first day of Washington’s shrimping season.
“The shrimp opener in Puget Sound is quite an event. We usually get one day, maybe two days in inner Puget Sound. That’s it. That’s all we get all year. So people kind of flock to the water,” Joe Pyburn, host of a hunting and fishing radio show on KIRO-AM, told sister TV station KIRO-TV.
Police and Everett Fire Department personnel tried but failed to raise the sinking 26-foot boat.
Rescue efforts continued until just before 6 p.m., at which point fire officials said it became a recovery effort.
Authorities are investigating why the boat sank.
