RCMP said Sunday afternoon they were retrieving the bodies of four victims from a sunken B.C. float plane, a day after the aircraft crashed off Vancouver Island's west coast.

The victims were identified as siblings Katrina Sam-English, 22, and Hunter Sam, 28, as well as their cousin Samantha Mattersdorfer, 24. All were from the tiny First Nations community of Ahousat, near the crash site. Locals say all three had young chilrden.

The pilot was Damon York, 33, of Tofino, where the flight originated.

Almost all the residents of Alhousat are Nuu-chah-nulth, or Nootka, natives and are a close-knit group. "Everybody's related to all of them," said one woman, who would not give her name. "Everybody's family here."

Although a dozen small boats from the community rushed to the scene of the crash, the aircraft sank within minutes and the would-be rescuers could do little but watch.

The plane was headed to Ahousat from Tofino on a six minute flight. No distress calls were picked up prior to the crash.

Wayne Bamford, a spokesperson for the joint rescue co-ordination centre in Victoria, told CTV News that a Buffalo aircraft and a Cormorant helicopter were quickly dispatched to the scene, arriving soon after the crash along with a Coast Guard vessel.

Military rescue technicians dove repeatedly into the water in hopes of finding survivors.

"We felt that it was worth having them dive down on the slim chance that somebody might have survived," Bamford said Saturday night. "(But) they were unable to locate the aircraft."

The search was called off after a few hours and the rescue aircraft from 442 Squadron were ordered back to their base in Comox, B.C.

The float plane crashed in a narrow channel swept by fast-moving tidal currents and is thought to have been carried away from the scene of the crash, possibly into deeper water.

"There was a large flood tide at the time of the crash which created a significant current in that channel," Bamford said. "The plane obviously didn't sink in the exact spot that it hit the water … it's been shifted by the tide some significant distance."

The cause of the crash is being investigated by the Transportation Safety Board and the BC Coroners Service.