SABANA DE LA MAR, Dominican Republic (AP) — Rescuers scouring the white-capped waters off the Dominican Republic’s coast have found 17 bodies and 13 survivors from a boat overloaded with migrants that capsized almost two days ago, officials said.

The boat carrying about 70 migrants from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico capsized before dawn Saturday morning and rescuers said hopes were fading for finding more survivors as search efforts were suspended because of darkness late Sunday.

“Tomorrow the sea will start to return the bodies,” said Jeffrey Pimentel, head of firefighters at Sabana del Mar, 95 miles (150 kilometers) northeast of Santo Domingo.

Luis Castro, intelligence director of the Dominican Navy, said the bodies of 12 men and five women have been found. Thirteen survivors were rescued. The suspected captain of the smuggler’s boat has been detained, he said.

Castro said that rescue efforts would resume Monday morning, but “it is difficult for anyone to survive two days swimming” under a burning sun.

Survivors said dozens of people plunged into the water when the boat, known as a “yola,” capsized. Passengers grabbed at anything that might help keep them afloat.

The illegal migrants apparently were all Dominicans, but authorities could not rule out that a few Cubans or Haitians might also have been on the boat.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which had helped Dominican rescuers by sea and air since mid-Saturday, suspended its search at noon Sunday “after Dominican authorities said they no longer needed our assistance,” said Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad in Puerto Rico.

Arismendy Manzueta, a 28-year-old farmer from the northern town of La Jagua who survived the journey, said the hopes of better economic prospects in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico made him risk his life aboard the overloaded boat. Puerto Rico is a common destination for Dominican migrants.

“Things are very bad here. A person works and works and never has nothing,” Manzueta said in a public hospital in Sabana de la Mar.

Manzueta said he did not tell his wife, who sat by his hospital bed, that he would try to sneak into the relatively wealthy Puerto Rico.

Maria Sobeida Guzman, a 28-year-old mother of three who also survived the journey, said she paid just over $1,000 for the illegal trip to Puerto Rico, where a cousin promised to get her a job giving manicures.