A deep-sea research and survey ship, named the Optimus Prime, has arrived off the coast of Kyrenia and is expected to join efforts on Monday to recover the 14 people who remain unaccounted for after a passenger ferry sank off the town’s coast last month.

The vessel is privately owned, and was commissioned by the Turkish government and the Turkish authorities to aid the two Turkish naval ships, the TCG Isin and the TCG Alemdar, which have been searching the wreckage since the beginning of this month.

Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel had said of the ship’s arrival on Sunday night that “leveraging the technical capabilities of this new vessel, we aim to access the interior sections of the wreckage, which is located 554 metres beneath the surface of the sea, and reach our missing persons”.

“We are confident that we will achieve results in this new phase … The families of the missing should know that the state has not given up on their loved ones. We will continue to utilise all available resources and pursue our efforts with determination to reach those who are missing,” he said.

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It has now been eight days since any bodies were recovered from the wreckage, with no bodies having been recovered since September 6. In total, eight people were confirmed to have died on the day the ferry sank, August 30, while six more bodies were recovered from the wreckage by search-and-rescue teams in the days which followed.

Of this, Ustel said on September 6 that “as the days pass, the conditions for the search-and-rescue operation, especially underwater and inside the sunken boat, are becoming increasingly difficult”.

Despite this, he reiterated on Sunday night that “the search operations … are continuing uninterruptedly, by sea, by land, and by air, seven days a week, 24 hours a day”.

The ferry capsized shortly after leaving the new port of Kyrenia en route to the Turkish port of Tasucu at a little after midday on August 30, with 259 passengers and eight crew members on board. 

All eight crew members arrested, ‘transport minister’ sacked

All eight members of the boat’s crew, including its captain, Mustafa Oz, were arrested on the day of the disaster, and all eight remain in custody, having most recently appeared in court on Friday last week, where a police representative said that five more people are wanted in connection with the case.

Previously, it had been said in court that the captain, who was publicly named as 66-year-old Mustafa Oz, had bought his Honduran captain’s licence for $3,500.

A police representative said at the time that Oz had said under questioning that he had initially obtained a licence in Turkey, but that it had become invalid after he did not work as a boat captain for 10 years.

The Optimus prime

When he wished to resume his career, the representative said, Oz had made contact with “some people in Greece” and, using his old Turkish licence number, obtained a Honduran licence after paying $3,500.

The Cyprus Mail has contacted the Republic of Honduras’ directorate-general of merchant maritime in an attempt to verify the authenticity of the licence, and is awaiting a response.

The disaster has also had political consequences, with the Turkish Cypriot authorities’ ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli having been removed from office. He was replaced by former ‘prime minister’ Faiz Sucuoglu on Friday night.