BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A Spanish research vessel that investigates marine ecosystems has been abruptly diverted from its usual task to take on a new job: Helping in the increasingly desperate search for the missing from Spain’s floods. The 24 crew members aboard the Ramón Margalef were preparing Friday to use its sensors and submergible robot to map an offshore area of 36 square kilometers —- the equivalent of more than 5,000 soccer fields —- to see if they can locate vehicles that last week’s swept into the Mediterranean Sea. The hope is that a map of sunken vehicles could lead to the recovery of bodies.
Nearly a hundred people have been officially declared missing, and authorities admit that is likely they are more people unaccounted for in addition to the over 200 declared dead. Pablo Carrera, the marine biologist leading the mission, estimates that in 10 days his team will be able to hand over useful information to police and emergency services. Without a map, he said it would be practically impossible for police to carry out an effective and systematic recovery operation to reach vehicles that ended up on the seabed.
“It would be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Carrera told The Associated Press by phone. Many when the tsunami-like flooding hit on Oct. 29.
The boat will join a wider effort by police and soldiers who have expanded their searches for bodies and the missing beyond the devastated towns and streets. Searchers have used poles to probe int.
