The body was spotted in the morning from a police helicopter and subsequently recovered by a vessel from the port services of Senj, Croatia. The body of a Portuguese man was found this Thursday off the coast of Croatia, where rescue teams had saved two members of a group of four friends on Wednesday following an incident on an inflatable boat, local authorities announced.
The search, which resumed at dawn on Thursday, is ongoing to locate the fourth missing person, the Croatian Ministry of the Sea stated in a release, adding that several boats and helicopters are participating in the operation, agency news France-Presse (AFP) reported.
When contacted by Lusa, a source from the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE) has not yet confirmed the information. The body was spotted during the morning from a police helicopter and was later recovered by a vessel belonging to the port authority of Senj, port captain Nenad Bugarin told national television (HRT).
It was then handed over to the police for identification, the Ministry of the Sea specified. The disappearance of the four tourists was reported to the authorities on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. The four individuals, a woman and three men whose ages were not specified, set off from a campsite near Senj aboard a 1.5-meter inflatable boat to paddle along the coast despite bad weather in the Velebit Channel, according to rescue teams.
Read more about this topic: Two of the four Portuguese missing at sea in Croatia found alive
Situated between the Velebit mountain range and the islands of Krk, Rab, and Pag, this channel is known for its violent and dangerous winds, which regularly disrupt maritime traffic. The woman was rescued on Wednesday in a cove on the island of Krk, 14 kilometers from Senj, after spending about eight hours in the water, not far from where the body of her friend was found this morning.
Shortly afterward, rescue teams located one of her friends, who had managed to get out of the water on his own and reach the rocks. The two survivors were treated by emergency services and hospitalized. Croatia, a Balkan country with 3.8 million inhabitants, is a popular tourist destination and received approximately 22 million visitors in 2025.
The majority of tourists head to the Adriatic coast, bordered by more than a thousand islands and islets, where water sports and activities are increasingly popular.
