The owner is Aroyat Management and the operator Kiva Marine, both of Istanbul, DenizHaber.net reported at 15:00 on Tuesday; the crew were 7 Egyptians, 6 Syrians and 3 Turks, and the missing man is the second engineer, Erkan Nika, whose brother told the outlet he was not among those rescued. Haber Denizde’s account says no life was lost; DenizHaber.net’s speaks of deaths without a number. The ship was built in 1997 and has sailed for Turkish operators since 2022.
It joins the Turkish-owned hulls hit since July that CAW has followed: the Reyhan Sarı off Novorossiysk on 22 July, the Tedy, the Lionfish and the Mariam M in the Bystre canal on 17 September, whose captain died. The Turkish outlets attribute the drone to Ukraine; no Ukrainian or Russian official account of the strike had surfaced in the wires by Wednesday morning, and the Turkish foreign ministry’s release index, whose newest entry is dated 28 September, carries nothing on the ship.
Haber Denizde’s account says no life was lost; DenizHaber.net’s speaks of deaths without a number.
The Aroyat has a place in the Black Sea’s record. In September 2023 it was among the first ships to use Ukraine’s temporary corridor out of Chornomorsk, The Maritime Executive noted. Its last voyage ran the other way, from a Georgian port to a Russian one, through water that London’s Joint War Committee has listed as a war-risk area since 16 September, with premiums that Turkish shipowners put at 1 to 1.5% of a hull’s value.
Georgia’s open water is inside the committee’s line, and Poti’s traffic with Russian ports runs through it. What the Aroyat carried, where it loaded and who insured it, none of the accounts says.