OCEAN CITY — The Coast Guard announced Thursday it has called off the search for a missing freight ship crewmember.
Around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, watch standards at Coast Guard Sector Hampton Roads received notification from the “Ibrahim Dede,” a 600-foot Marshall Islands-flagged freight ship heading from New Jersey to Norfolk about a missing crewmember. The crewmember was last seen aboard the ship when it departed Bayonne, N.J. The crew discovered the sailor was missing while the ship was in transit to its next port and a search was initiated from New Jersey to Ocean City.
A Coast Guard 45-foot Response Boat crew, a Coast Guard H-65 Dolphin Helicopter crew and a Coast Guard C-130 Hercules airplane searched for the missing merchant sailor from 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The crews searched along the coast from Bayonne, N.J. to Ocean City throughout the day and night on Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Wednesday, the search area was expanded north to New York Harbor and south to Chincoteague.