120 days have elapsed without being able to rescue the corpse of Francis, the 47-year-old fisherman that disappeared Sunday June 20 when he was fishing with his brother in front of the port of Granadilla.
Francis became entangled with a pot and disappeared to the bottom of the sea a hundred meters deep. Since then, family members and fishermen from Tajao have not ceased in their search, with the support of the Civil Guard and with the collaboration of the expert diver in marine rescue Moisés Pires, who lives in El Médano.
Francis has been searched by air, land and sea without success, but his search has never been abandoned, although all forecasts are against after an exhaustive reconnaissance of the area from the port of Granadilla to the Red Mountain. However, once the results of the sonar that have been used in the rescue tasks are known, Moisés Pires brings us a halo of hope. “A few days ago we received the results of the use of the Klein 3000 side scan sonar – he tells us – and, of the 200 that have been taken in the four days that we use it, there are two or three that collect figures that do not match the marine environment, with the benthic bottom, taken very close to where Francis fell into the water. One of those shots is very promising, but always speaking from prudence ”.
Pires insists that “this figure has a strange shape that resembles a person and now we can only hire a robot that can lower those 110 meters deep and can confirm those ultrasounds that have been performed.” An operation that will not be easy because “hiring a robot that certifies that this image corresponds to Francis can cost 30,000 euros, because the depth is prohibitive for a diver, although I have gone down more than 100 meters, but in a more controlled environment. They can bring you down with a basket, but throw yourself like that to scuba, throwing gases, you are very much at the expense of what the currents are ”. But he made it clear that “we are not giving up.”
