Fishermen who had been shipwrecked a week ago in Ecuador were found in Colombia

A week after their disappearance, fishermen who left the province of Esmeraldas alive in northern Ecuador were found in Colombia. The debilitating effects of an outboard engine caused them to be stranded on the high seas, said Carlos Zambrano, father of the youngest of the three.

The artisanal fishermen who experienced this shipwreck are Junior Zambrano Mero, Winer Cedeño Peralta and Eloy Lara Nazareno, aged 23, 32 and 36 respectively, who were found alive a week after being reported missing. They left the port of Muisne, located in the south of the province of Esmeraldas and 57 kilometers away from their namesake capital, on Sunday, March 6, and their return would take three days. But a mechanical failure in the outboard engine left them adrift.

Earlier this month, fishermen Javier Castillo, Carlos Castillo and Adrián Aguirre also disappeared on the high seas, on a boat named La Pinta. So far there is no trace of them or the boat that also left Muisne, said the relatives of the disappeared.

The Coast Guard Naval Subcommand in the north of the Andean country reported that sometimes fishermen reach the coast of Colombia and some go to surrounding countries. Others fell into the hands of pirates, whose ships and engines were stolen and the victims were left adrift causing their deaths.

Last February, three fishermen (one Ecuadorian and two Venezuelans) were rescued in Colombia, five days later. They left the shores of the Esmeraldas to fish. The ship they were working on broke down, said the Colombian Navy, which rescued the victims.

The case report of shipwrecked people who end up far from the waters of Ecuador and even Colombia records the case of the 18 Ecuadorian fishermen who were stranded in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos and who were pushed north by the waters in the subcontinent. The shipwrecked men returned from Panama on December 11, 2020 and were received by authorities at Guayaquil's José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport after joint work between the Ecuadorian and Panamanian foreign ministries.

The Ecuadorian embassy in Panama reported that an oil tanker found Ecuadorians and said that the survivors were rescued “in good health.”

Mainland Ecuador shares maritime boundaries with Colombia and Peru. However, island Ecuador, consisting of the Galapagos Archipelago, shares maritime boundaries with Costa Rica, north of Panama. When fishermen who depart from the Ecuadorian seas are shipwrecked, there is a possibility that they will run aground or be rescued in the territory or waters of these four countries.

In the case of fishermen found in Colombia, the distance could be a few tens or hundreds of nautical miles considering a circular path of the vessel, after starting from the port of Muisne, shipwrecking on the high seas and returning to Colombian land due to the thrust of the waves. But in the case of the 18 who were found in Panama and who departed from the waters of the Galapagos, the distance is at least 950 nautical miles, after crossing the waters of Costa Rica, Colombia or even, errantly, both.

Ecuador's maritime territory is currently 1.1 million square kilometers, which is the sum of the Economically Exclusive Zones (SEZs) of mainland Ecuador and island Ecuador in the Galapagos. That means a space that quadruples the Ecuadorian continental territory or the approximate equivalent to the territory of Bolivia, the 5th largest country in South America.

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