MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina — As search teams raced against time, and stormy seas, to find a missing Argentine submarine, officials said on Sunday that earlier hopeful reports that the crew might have tried to make satellite calls in recent days appeared to be wrong.

The Defense Ministry on Saturday had based optimistic statements on reports that there were seven attempts to communicate by satellite phone from the search area off the Patagonia coast.

But on Sunday, the Argentine Navy said that it was still analyzing the calls and that there was no “clear evidence” that the calls had come from the submarine. And the satellite phone company Iridium said in a statement that it had found no evidence that an Iridium phone aboard the vessel had been used since Wednesday morning.

The reports came as an increasingly robust international effort was hampered by stormy weather in the 186,000-square-mile search area.