Fishing trip turns into scary ordeal for seven anglers

LABUAN: A fishing trip for seven anglers here turned into a scary ordeal when their boat sank in bad weather Wednesday morning, forcing them to swim for hours in rough waters near an oil platform eight nautical miles off Labuan waters.

All the seven anglers identified as Robin Munding, 25, Aksan Ahmad, 34, Toron Abg Ghani, 47, Besar Munding, 19, Roslan Penanti, 25, Bernard Muin, 29 and Arsit Jiltani, 42, were setting out to sea for fishing in the wee hours of Wednesday but their boat was suddenly hit by massive waves and sank at about 3.30am.

Instead of hoping for passing vessels to rescue them, all of them decided to swim in rough waters to find a floating object but only found the oil platform for shelter.

Labuan Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) enforcement chief Captain Che Adnan Md Isa said all of them were spotted sheltered below the platform by the platform operation staff and subsequently alerted the agency's operations room.

He said a chopper had to be deployed at about 8.15am, five hours after the incident, to rescue the anglers due to the bad weather and massive wave. — Bernama