THE body of fisherman, Gowkarran Outar called “Gavin” washed up ashore at the Number 63 Beach on Thursday.

The discovery was made by local fishermen a little after 12:30 hrs. The men alerted police who took the body to the Skeldon Hospital.

The badly decomposed body had a partial tattoo on the left side chest which aided relatives to positively identify the body as that of Outar. The elbow to the wrists as well as the head, knees and feet of the body were totally decomposed.

Guyana Chronicle has confirmed that Outar was working on the ‘Shifanie’ which had five crew members, one of whom is survivor, Sherwin Lovell. The other members are Danesh Persaud called “Vicky”, Ralph Couchman called “Burnham” and Glendory Jones called “Alkaline” and “Joshua”. The boat is owned by Hemanlall Ramsarran who also confirmed to Guyana Chronicle that the tattoo matches that of Outar.

Persaud was the captain of the boat and relatives who spoke with Guyana Chronicle believe that his body was the first to have been discovered on the Wai Wai Bank. This takes the number of person accounted for on this vessel to three. Only Couchman and Jones are still missing.

The Shifanie is believed to have been the last boat attacked, according to the survivor’s account who said the vessel was attacked after midnight two Saturdays ago. The first that was attacked is believed to be the ‘Romia’, a little after 18:30hrs on Friday evening, another survivor said.

With this discovery, the final count as of press time was four bodies, five survivors and 11 still missing following the pirate attack on four fishing vessels with 20 fishermen on April 27.