By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A search for seven people lost from a small boat that capsized off California near San Diego has been called off with no sign of survivors, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Tuesday, bringing to 10 the likely death toll in a suspected migrant smuggling bid gone awry.
The Coast Guard “suspended” its daylong search-and-rescue operation late on Monday, meaning no further effort to find the victims would be made without new information to justify doing so, according to Chief Petty Officer Levi Read, a spokesperson for the agency.
Although no official pronouncement was made that the missing were presumed dead, the decision to halt the search took into consideration the unlikelihood that anyone could endure frigid open seas, even with flotation, for more than an hour or two before succumbing to hypothermia, Read said.
Sea temperatures where the “panga”-style open fishing vessel overturned in choppy waters shortly after sunrise on Monday ranged from about 52 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, considered a cold-water immersion environment, he said.
Two children were believed to be among the seven people unaccounted for after the boat capsized. Three more victims were found dead immediately after the vessel washed ashore near Torrey Pines State Beach north of San Diego.
Of the six individuals who survived the incident, four were rescued and taken to hospitals. One was listed in critical condition.
Two others located at a nearby beach were detained as suspects in what Department of Homeland Security officials said was an attempt to smuggle migrants to the U.S. from Mexico by sea.
At least some of the boat’s occupants were apparently from India, as a number of Indian passports “were found on the beach near where the panga washed up,” about 30 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Read said.
Hundreds of similar migrant crossing attempts have been documented by the Coast Guard at sea in the San Diego area annually in recent years.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)
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