Seven men left the jetty. The Chief Minister told officers to call their houses.

Seven fishermen from coastal Andhra are missing at sea. N. Chandrababu Naidu has told officials to keep their families briefed while the search runs.

They are from Odalarevu, Dummalapeta and Vasalathippa in Allavaram mandal of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema district — the same stretch the West Godavari and East Godavari desks have been running all week. They left the Odalarevu fish-landing jetty about 10 in the morning on 3 August. Families had them on the phone until about 11 that morning. Then the line died. The boat was due back by 12 August. It did not come.

Naidu reviewed the search on Wednesday in a virtual meeting with Fisheries Minister K. Atchannaidu and officials. Intensify the search, he said. And tell the families, regularly, what the search has found — and what it has not.

Officials told him the Coast Guard and marine police were already out, with the district watching. Two Dornier aircraft, Navy boats and seven other boats were on the water and in the air. Fishing boats from Kakinada, Bhairavapalem, Visakhapatnam and Paradip had been asked to look. Some boats had been seen about 14 nautical miles off Paradip; crews were checking whether they had anything to do with the missing men.

Atchannaidu met families at Odalarevu and told them the State would make every effort. Home and Disaster Management Minister V. Anitha asked officials to push the search harder. The Visakhapatnam Range inspector-general and the additional director-general for coastal security sat in the Navy and Coast Guard control rooms in Visakhapatnam. Later briefings added more metal — helicopters, more ships, a longer box of nautical miles toward Odisha and West Bengal, a yellow boat number in one account. The Chief Minister's instruction did not change: find them, and do not leave the houses uninformed.

A missing boat is not a press release. It is seven households counting nights from 3 August. A Dornier does not replace a phone call from the collectorate. Naidu's line about briefing families is the least a coastal State can do when it has already used the Navy. It is also an admission that families have been sitting without a reliable clock.

Some later accounts spoke of eight men, and one list circulating on Thursday named villagers from Odalarevu and two from Kakinada. The Chief Minister's Wednesday release, and the Thursday search copy that followed it, named seven. This cutting stays with seven. Names that are not locked across the public briefings are not printed here.

Until a hull is identified, the public facts are the jetty, the date, the seven, the aircraft, the 14-nautical-mile check off Paradip, and a Chief Minister who has told his officers to pick up the phone. The sea does not read a release. The families do. West Godavari's card and Konaseema's card are the same wait: men who went for fish and have not come back, and a government that is now measuring its care by how often it calls the house.

Do not use a grief photograph of the families unless an official still is already public. The story is the search and the briefing order, not a portrait of waiting. If the boats off Paradip are theirs, the next sentence will be a name. If they are not, the Dorniers keep flying. Either way, the order Naidu signed in that virtual room is the civic minimum: update the families. A State that can launch aircraft can also lift a receiver.