For more than a week, as the days passed with little good news from the search team, relatives of 70 fishermen missing since Ockhi struck them during fishing expedition, waited with bated breath hoping for a miracle. But the 32-strong fishers’ team has returned empty-handed on Friday, spending almost eight days looking for their missing counterparts in the rough sea, dashing any last hope the families had of tracing out their dearest ones. With the third search mission – one led by the Navy and others by fishermen – going in vain with no glad news, the dejected families are now forced to believe that they are dead and want the government to declare it officially. “The government should declare them dead and provide us the promised relief Rs 20 lakh and government jobs, soon,” they said. However, a few realtives, like those of John Bright, 32, of Vallavilai, do not need those compensations but want the government to carry out a deep see search. They are still keeping their fingers crossed that someday their dearest ones would come back. “He is still alive. The rescue team has searched only a few thousand nautical miles. But the sea is over several lakh nautical miles,” B Gnanaprakash, 61, who gave a good share to Rs 12 lakh, the total cost of the search, told TOI. His tuna boat named ‘All Saints’ went fishing with 10 men off the Cochin Fisheries Harbour on November 21. The team included six from Vallavilai, two from nearby Marthandanthurai and two more from Assam. The boat was among the six tuna boats from Vallavilai that is still missing. The 70 men missing in those boats include 33 from Vallavilai village. Bright’s wife Mary Liji who turned 25 on Saturday hoped that she would be able to celebrate her birthday with her husband. The mother-of-two is hopeful that her husband would be rescued if the government carries out a proper deep-sea search. There are reasons for the family to believe that he was not killed in the cyclone. His cousin P Soosai, 35, who was stuck in the storm in his tuna boat ‘Basilica’ reached Kochi safely on December 8. “On that day we were about 50 nautical miles from the harbour when we got a wireless message from John Bright,” he said. Soosai added that he could recognise that it was John Bright with his voice because he was not only his cousin and neighbour but his buddy. “He had mentioned the name of his boat and the other boats from the village. But we lost contact later. Another boat that stuck in the storm and returned the same day heard his message. So we know he was not dead in the cyclone,” he believed. He said that the wireless communication system used by fishermen they can be clearly heard for even more than 400 nautical miles when the weather is clear, so they could not locate the boat. “Since it is a month since the incident took place, his boat could have drifted a few hundred nautical miles into the sea. It could be in areas where our team could not search,” he added. A few days ago families of a few missing fishermen from Vallavilai went to a church at Kazhakootam in Kerala. “Mentioning the name of my son’s boat the priest told them that the boat’s engine had gone faulty and that all men were alive but running short of supplies. The priest added that they are in a place where people have not searched. So we spent lakhs of rupees for the search,” Bright’s father Gnanaprakash said. Brights’ G Sabeenamma said that the Centre could still save the men if the Navy conducts a search in the deep seas using radars and their state-of-the-art gadgets and by deploying the defence choppers. “We don’t want death compensation from the government. I want my only son alive,” she added.