Nine missing after fishing boat capsizes off Japan

Nine crew members of a crab fishing boat are missing after the vessel capsized off Japan's western coast, coast guard officials said Friday.

The 76-tonne fishing boat Daifukumaru capsized in the Sea of Japan just off Shimane prefecture at about 5:20 am (2020 GMT Thursday), leaving all nine men on board missing, a Japan Coast Guard spokesman told AFP.

"We are searching with four patrol boats that will be joined by two more, and patrol aircraft," he said.

The missing crew members include eight Japanese and one Indonesian, another spokesman said.

"They were fishing for crabs when water flowed into the boat," an official with the local fishermen's union that operated the vessel said on public broadcaster NHK.

"So the boat was towed by another vessel. That was when it capsized." 

(AFP)