The Royal Thai Navy (RTN) on Saturday rescued all 16 Bangladeshi-origin crew members aboard the Sealloyd Arc (IMO: 8682036), a small container vessel.
The RTN also said on Saturday night that it had managed to extract the crew from the ship unharmed, and that its naval officials were organising an emergency response after the vessel sank about three miles off the southern coast of Phuket.
It had been responding to a distress signal from the Panama-flagged vessel, which had been severely listing (tilting to one side due to the entry of water inside the vessel). AIS data showed that the Sealloyd Arc had been on its way from Port Klang in Malaysia to Chattogram in Bangladesh.
The response to the distress signal was twofold. A local fishing boat first arrived on the scene and rescued eight of the 16 crew members, after which a patrol boat from the Phuket Provincial Administration recovered the other eight—including the captain.
Both groups of crew members were then transferred to the naval vessel, which took them all to shore.
Patrol boats and a reconnaissance aircraft remain at the scene surveying the situation, as of the RTN's last update.
This is because the ship's manifest showed it had been carrying 229 containers, of which 14 had hazardous materials in them. While some of the ship's containers sunk, a few others floated, and efforts were on to bring these containers to shore, as per a Maritime Executive report.
The environmental impact of the container spill is yet to be determined, but urgent plans have already been made for salvage operations on the vessel, said to be buried 61m below sea level.
Reports say that it had already caused an oil slick about 4.5 miles long and more than one mile wide. However, none of this oil has reached the coast of southern Phuket.
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