Update: Search for ‘Man Overboard’ in Santa Barbara Channel Ends
Bulk Container Ship 'African Cardinal' Reports Crew Member Missing During Run Between Shanghai and Long Beach
[UPDATE: Jun. 21, 2023, 7:10 a.m.] After 15 hours of searching, the Coast Guard suspended attempts to locate the crew member who fell from the African Cardinal. Chief Warrant Officer John Rose, who coordinated the search, said they’d made “exhaustive efforts” by air and sea to locate the individual. Ending a search was “never easy,” Rose said, and came around 8 p.m. Pacific Time after a helicopter and two boats had searched 200 square nautical miles of the Santa Barbara Channel.
[Original Story] A search is underway in the waters southwest of Point Conception for a crew member who apparently fell off the African Cardinal at around 5 a.m. roughly 14 miles from the Santa Barbara County coast. A helicopter crew flew from the Coast Guard (CG) base at Point Mugu to the area, and a small boat from CG Station Channel Islands and the CG Cutter Robert Ward were dispatched.
The African Cardinal is a 655-foot-long container ship holding bulk quantities of an unspecified cargo and sailing under the Panamanian flag. Online sources state it is registered to the Batanagar Shipping Corporation based in Japan. The ship was traveling from Shanghai to Long Beach, according to MarineTraffic.com. It was due to arrive in Long Beach today at around 4 p.m., but ship’s traffic shows it to be stationary in the Santa Barbara Channel off San Miguel Island.
