Bodies pulled from sea are confirmed as missing fishermen
The bodies of two men lost at sea when their tiny boat collided with a fishing trawler have been formally identified.
Mircea Ilie, 40, a bike shop owner from Brighton — known as Mitch — and Irinel Popovici, 41, were found by emergency services on Monday morning.
Father-of-four Mr Ilie had only been the owner of the James 2 since May this year.
The four men left Shoreham harbour on a fishing trip in The Channel at 10.30pm on August 6 and their boat sank after colliding with the trawler two hours later.
Irinel Popovici, 41 (right) and Mircea Ilie, 40 (left), were both from Brighton. The men were with a party of four fishermen whose five-meter boat capsized and sank after late night collision
Shoreham Lifeboat is pictured bringing one of the men's bodies ashore after the tragic collision between a their boat and a trawler
Traiam Dumitrache was pronounced dead on 6 August after his body was recovered from the sea
One of the men survived and was rescued and one body recovered on the same day.
It is believed all four men on board the James 2 were thrown overboard when they collided with a scallop dredger off the south coast.
Traiam Dumitrache, 50, from London was formally identified following a post mortem examination on Thursday morning.
Elvis Cojocariu clung to a buoy for hours before another fishing boat picked him up.
Police and marine accident investigators identified the scallop dredging boat, Vertrouwen, which left Shoreham around the time of the incident bound for Grimsby as the boat which collided with the James 2.
Elvis Cojocariu is the only man so far to have been rescued after the fishing boat he and three friends were on collided with a bigger vessel
Sussex police are now in touch with the owners, MacDuff Shellfish Ltd, who are co-operating fully with the investigation.
A spokesman for Sussex police said: 'Two bodies recovered from the sea off Shoreham on Monday morning (August 14) have been identified as those of the two men missing since Sunday, August 6.
'The first was reported to HM Coastguard by a fisherman around 2.5 miles off Shoreham Harbour around 7am.
'The RNLI Shoreham lifeboat was launched to recover the body and as they were returning to shore, a second body was spotted in the water just before 8am.
'Both bodies were landed at Brighton Marina where they were handed to the coroner's officer and following notification to their families, they have now been formally identified.
'It is now known that the collision occurred around 12.30am and the boat was lost without raising a distress call.
'One man was rescued by commercial fisherman after clinging to a buoy for more than five hours and another man's body was recovered by an HM Coastguard helicopter later that morning.'
Another unidentified body was found inside the new Rampion wind farm, 20km, off the coast of Worthing, on Friday.