The peo­ple of To­ba­go are still hold­ing on­to hope as three days have passed since two fish­er­men went miss­ing at sea.

The au­thor­i­ties have been search­ing for the fish­er­men for the last two days. How­ev­er, a de­ci­sion on whether or not the op­er­a­tion will tran­si­tion from a search and res­cue to a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion is ex­pect­ed by the end of to­day, ac­cord­ing to To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art. 

Al­bert James and Ju­nior Thorne left Pi­geon Point Fish Port on Tues­day morn­ing aboard a white and blue fi­bre­glass pirogue, TFT 1528 – XE­NA, but nev­er re­turned.

They were re­port­ed­ly head­ing south­west to set up three fish pots, though their ex­act lo­ca­tion was not dis­closed.

The fish­er­men, who typ­i­cal­ly re­turned to shore be­tween 9 am and 9.30 am, have not been seen since their de­par­ture.

Con­cerned rel­a­tives re­port­ed them miss­ing lat­er that day when they failed to make con­tact.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Stew­art said con­di­tions re­mained un­changed, with rough seas con­tin­u­ing to make the search and res­cue ef­fort chal­leng­ing.

Stew­art said, “We know there are a lim­it­ed amount of teams ... we will con­tin­ue to see what can be done, whether or not we are mov­ing from search and res­cue to re­cov­ery. Maybe in the next 24 hours, we will have to make that de­ci­sion.”

San­dra, James’ wife, said she re­mains heart­bro­ken and wor­ried but was hold­ing on­to faith that her hus­band would re­turn safe­ly.

Mean­while, Thorne’s broth­er said his fam­i­ly was al­so hope­ful but ad­mit­ted they were grow­ing more anx­ious.