A research boat will scan the seabed to help search for those missing in Spain’s floods
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 submersible 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 catastrophic floods swept into the Mediterranean Sea.
The hope is that a map of sunken vehicles could lead to the
recovery of bodies
. Nearly 100 people have been officially declared missing, and authorities admit that is likely more people are unaccounted for, in addition to more than 200 declare...