any sign of the 12 missing, commander? no. good morning, jon. so far we haven t found any of the missing 12 persons. we do have four helicopters out offshore searching for them as well as five cutters, three of them are on scene right now with the rest of them enroute. jon: we see the video of your rescue crews air lifting some into helicopters by basket. were they in life jackets? were they in life rafts? do you know how you were able to find those people? i understand that they were able to actually evacuate to a vessel that was already out there, a supply vessel. jon: all right. so if there was an explosion that started all this, it s possible that some of these missing people simply were blown into the water with no chance to actually put on life jackets or get into a lifeboat? yes, jon, but we are hopeful. we do continue to search for any survivors in the area. jon: what s the water temperature like? is it a survivable time of year?
it is. i mean, it s not i don t know the exact temperature, but it s not freezing cold. we re hopeful that we ll be able to get them out of the water if we can find them. jon: all right. so at last, again, the last word we had is that a dozen people are still missing. that s correct. there were 126 originally on the vessel, 114 have been accounted for. jon: and who, who is responsible for trying to put the fire out on the rig itself? does the coast guard get involved in that, or is that up to the operator of the rig? right now bp is trying to, actually, shut the well off down below the water line. which would shut off the oil fire, hopefully. jon: and any word as to how this happened, what caused the explosion? you know, jon, at this time we just don t know. we are going to be conducting an investigation into the cause of the accident, but at this time we don t know what caused it. jon: sherry is a public affairs
21 crew members on board, it s the fourth attack in less than a week, the pirates hold 16 ships and 343 hostages all together. joining us on the phone, commander john harbor, spokesman for the e.u. naval force that s working off the coast of somalia. there is good news and some bad news to report in this story, commander. it s my understanding, though, that there isn t a lot you feel you can do when these pirates are operating outside the boundaries that your war ships patrol. that is correct. good afternoon to you. the pirates have been pushed out of the area of operation effectively because of how successful e.u. has been with the guards to pirates generally and they re operating much further off the somali coast. in fact yesterday there was a hijacking of a vessel with 77 people involved and that was 1000 miles off the coast, so yes, we ve pushed the barriers out of the gulf of aden, away from the main
the highlights in the underwater pocket is a sunken ship it was put here after it was retired from service a supply vessel. has come on and i m talking you re not see it all in a single dive the complex are simply too large as a new surprise around every corner. yes this is art a minister you can find a sculpture on practically every corner some of them are pretty wild.
and the australian authorities who are coordinating this search have just concluded it s too dangerous to send the planes out. they can t operate in those conditions. the hmas success, which is an australian navy supply vessel, which had been en route to try and check out the objects, the apparent debris that was spotted yesterday by australian search aircraft, has been withdrawn from the area because the seas are so bad and will wait outside the search area until the seas have subsided and it can return possibly wednesday. that means that that debris, who knows what will happen to it in that 24 hours, in that swell, in those churning oceans. it s going to be doubly difficult now to try and find, to try to & trace what was seen monday by the australian search aircraft. that had raised hopes. that and also some sightings by