The search for three men missing off the North Wales coast in their fishing boat 'Nicola Faith' has been called off by the coastguard pending "further information".

Teams on the sea and in the air continued their search during Friday daytime but could not locate the vessel.

It was thought the boat may have been dropping lobster pots and was last seen off Rhos-on-Sea around 10pm on Wednesday night. However, when the boat failed to return to Conwy harbour in the early hours of Thursday, the local coastguard was informed.

The second day of searching followed an intensive day on Thursday which saw coastguard and RNLI teams from North Wales and North West England survey an area of hundreds of square miles.

The local crew has been confirmed as Ross Ballantine, Alan Minard and skipper Carl Mc. Grath.

A statement has been published this evening by RNLI Rhyl.

Six RNLI lifeboats launched early (Friday) to continue the search for a missing fishing vessel with three people on board off the North Wales coast.

The alarm was first raised yesterday morning for the missing vessel. Yesterday, seven RNLI lifeboats joined the multi-agency search, with some lifeboats out for nearly 12 hours at sea. Llandudno, Rhyl, Conwy, Beaumaris, and Hoylake RNLI volunteers joined volunteer Coastguard teams and other emergency services in the search which lasted until 10pm last night.

Volunteer lifeboat crews from Llandudno, Rhyl, Hoylake, and Conwy all launched this morning to help search for the missing fishing vessel and its crew. Both Shannon class all-weather lifeboats and inshore lifeboats from Rhyl and Llandudno were requested to launch by HM Coastguard shortly after 8am this morning.

Hoylake RNLI volunteers launched their Shannon class all-weather lifeboat shortly after 8:50am and Conwy volunteer crew launched the inshore lifeboat at 9:07am.

The search coordinated by HM Coastguard has continued all day.

This evening, HM Coastguard have now confirmed that the search for a missing fishing boat off the North Wales coast with three crew members on board has been stood down.