A Taiwanese ship carrying 49 crew has vanished in the remote South Atlantic Ocean without any sign of a mayday call, authorities say.
The Hsiang Fu Chun, a 700-tonne squid fishing vessel, lost contact with its owners "soon" after reporting that water was leaking on to the deck at around 3am on February 26.
The vessel was sailing about 3,148km off the Falkland Islands when it vanished, according to recorded satellite data.
Its crew include a Taiwanese skipper and chief engineer, as well as 11 Chinese, 21 Indonesian, 13 Filipino and two Vietnamese sailors.
Taiwan has launched a search effort, and is appealing for assistance from Argentina and Britain as well as other ships in the area.
"We still don't know where the ship is and what happened to it," Huang Hong-yen, spokesman for the Fisheries Agency, told AFP.
He said there was no evidence the boat had sunk. The ship was equipped with a system that automatically issues a mayday signal when placed under a certain water pressure, but no such signal was sent.
Huang gave no details on the weather in the area at the time, but said that conditions were often unsettled in the South Atlantic Ocean.
He also did not explain why it had taken authorities so many days to make the ship's disappearance public.
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