Odd that they didn't notice the .50 cal warning shots. And trying to pass a big ship on the front, rather than the stern(even with having to avoid the wake), seems stupid enough to qualify them for a Darwin Award . No sympathy here.
What were they doing? The obvious answer would be that it was a sport fishing venture, but in the quotes of the survivors I saw the word “trawling” used to describe their activities. I suppose in the loosest possible sense this could have been a translation of of a word indicating “fishing” or “trolling” as we would put it, but to me it doesn’t quite add up. The quoted survivor says he is experienced enough to know all about warning signals etc., but yet he was naive enough to race at full speed towards a USN vessel in the Strait of Hormuz?