FILE PHOTO: A fisherman from the Northern Victor has gone overboard.Photograph by: Online, marinetraffic.com

A man who fell from a fishing ship into frigid seas south of Prince Rupert Tuesday is now assumed dead.

An unidentified man went overboard from the 110-metre Northern Victor at 5 p.m. Tuesday, officials from the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria said. Search crews, including a Canadian Forces Cormorant helicopter, mounted an “intensive search” through the night without spotting him.

The search resumed Wednesday, but crews “stood down” in the afternoon, said maritime coordinator Troy Haddock.

“We went a lot further than the [expected] survival time,” Haddock said. “The water was extremely frigid and the air is cold.”

Sub-Lieut. Mark Fifield said Wednesday morning a number of coast guard ships and a coast guard helicopter continued to scour a “condensed search area” about 100 kilometres south of Prince Rupert.

If searchers had anything in their favour, it was that the man was lost in the Fraser Reach inlet, just east of Price Island, not “in the vast open sea,” Fifield said.

The man’s identity will not be released until his family is notified.