The dramatic rescue mission led by Marine Pilot Captain Ritesh Bhamaria, who works for "Torres Pilots," unfolds like an action-adventure film on the High Seas. The weather was bad with winds blowing at 30 knots, and seas at the height of 3 to 3.5 M, visibility was very poor and added to all that, the rains lashed down.
- Indian-Australian Marine Pilot, Captain Ritesh Bhamaria rescued two Australians from shark infected waters at Torres Strait.
- This was an incredible rescue operation , but Providence helped us says Capt. Bhamaria, whose entire crew was of Indian origin.
- The two survivors were an uncle and nephew Warraber men who clung to a wooden board for about 18 hours in the water.
Captain Bhamaria was assigned Pilotage duties on M. T. Godam a super tanker through the Torres Straits, earlier this month. The entire crew aboard this huge Super Tanker was of Indian origin.
“While turning on the usual turn around Kircaldie Reef and Archer’s Reef, along with the Ship’s Officer we sighted some unusual movement on the surface of the water. I thought I could see hands, once it was ascertained by us that they were two humans lying on a wooden plank, I immediately put the ship in Emergency operational mode calling for the full crew to be stand by,” the Pilot narrates.
“Turning the ship in restricted waters and the prevailing weather conditions was very difficult. We lost sight of the people 3 times, moreover since two people were sighted there would always be a chance of other people being in the water as well.”
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“The risk of running over people in poor visibility, persistent heavy rains and rough weather was very, very high. In case we ran over any people or got a human being caught up in the ship’s propeller, I could have landed in grave risks of serious legal implications,” according to Captain Bhamaria.
Proverbially, the tide turned in favour of the victims and rescuers. This had been such a precise and swift action that the AMSA’s search and rescue response manager, confirmed that “We have conducted many rescue operations in the Torres Strait but this was incredible. They were lucky on so many levels, It was highly likely those men would have perished,
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“It is one of the most lucky rescues I have been ever involved in. It is almost entirely unheard of, It doesn’t happen,” Captain Bhamaria opines, “It was help from providence, a signal from the one above, it was a complete Team effort with all the crew and other rescue Teams.”
To add to the danger and high drama, one of the crew members who was filming the rescue operation spotted a shark in the water. The pilot at once ordered the ship to be turned around and they blasted the horn, so that the two victims at sea could sense, that help was at hand.
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Marine Pilot Bhamaria could have easily chosen to stand in the area at the safer distance and await the rescue teams to to arrive. He avers, ' I also ran a risk of running the ship on the shallows of the Reef, which would have created additional problems of jeopardising my whole career, but precious human lives were at stake, and I was confident of my ability to turn the ship safely” ”
He did motivate the crew, and they responded positively to the Pilot’s call. “Fortunately, the whole team gelled in very well and the Master and Crew also being from the same nationality (Indian) helped communication and the cooperation between the two teams in this hour of disaster.”
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When the crew realized that there was a shark in the proximity of the survivors lying on a wooden plank, launching a rescue boat was a very difficult decision. The reason being, if the fisherman’s boat had been swamped in this kind of weather then the rescue boat too would meet the same fate.
Finally, instead of waiting for the rescue helicopters and the rescue crafts to arrive on the scene, the pilot took the decision to manoeuvre the whole ship towards the survivors, as the approach of a big ship would drive any sharks further away from the the survivors. Manoeuvring the ship to perfection and avoiding the reefs, he did drop the smoke marker with the lifebuoy as close as 20 meters from the survivors, to chase away the sharks. The survivors could easily reach the buoy and secured themselves to it. He then turned the ship safely away from the reefs and made a second and final approach.
On the second approach he took the ship very close to the survivors to drop another buoy, this time to pick them up, "This again was a risky manoeuvre. Once they were secured to the buoy, with the ship’s propeller safely stopped, one survivor was picked up on board and the second survivor was later released to the rescue diver who had arrived on the helicopter." The Pilot shares.
The two survivors were Warraber men, Lui Tommy Billy 37, and his uncle Abi Solomon Bob 47, who had spent about 18 hours clinging to a three-meter plank in the Torres Strait. They survived miraculously with scratches and minor cuts.
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Source: Supplied
