Indonesia hunts 129 missing after Virgo Transport 8 capsizes in the Java Sea

Search crews in the Java Sea spent Monday working around an overturned hull that still held most of the people listed on the manifest of Virgo Transport 8. Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, Basarnas, said 129 people remained unaccounted for after the ferry listed and capsized early on Sunday. Rescuers had taken 108 survivors to Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin and recovered six bodies.

The ship left Tanjung Perak in Surabaya at 10.33 on Saturday, bound for South Kalimantan. It carried 213 passengers and 30 crew on paper, plus 89 vehicles. The passenger list was lopsided in a way that is common on this crossing. Basarnas later broke the numbers down as 59 adult passengers, one child, 126 drivers and vehicle assistants, and 27 ship-related workers. Manifests on Indonesian inter-island routes often diverge from the number of people actually on board.

Contact failed at about 2 a.m. local time on Sunday. The captain had reported waves of up to three metres and a heavy list to starboard. Authorities said they received a distress call about two hours later. A passing helicopter confirmed the ferry had rolled in the Masalembo waters, roughly 148 kilometres from Banjarmasin and about 93 miles south of the city by another official reckoning.

Rinto Arahap, a 33-year-old survivor who spoke to Agence France-Presse, said many passengers were asleep when the vessel began to heel. He heard what sounded like metal breaking about five hours into the voyage. People climbed onto tables. Some pushed. Life jackets were grabbed in a rush toward the upper deck.

By Monday, Basarnas chief Mohammad Syafii said about 655 personnel were on the search, working from 17 vessels and five aircraft, including navy ships and helicopters. Earlier briefings had put the first wave of the operation at 12 vessels and two helicopters. Divers and navy underwater drones were assigned to look inside and around the hull. Waves of 2.5 metres and a strong current kept slowing the work.

Families gathered at Trisakti and at the Surabaya end of the route. Survivors were treated at a temporary medical post on the Banjarmasin quayside. Officials told relatives they still hoped to find people alive in air pockets, a claim that has accompanied many Indonesian ferry accidents and that grows harder to hold as hours pass in open water.

The 119-metre ferry was due in Banjarmasin at 14.00 on Sunday. Maritime tracking sites logged the last position before the silence. Indonesia's navy released photographs of the capsized ship lying in choppy water. Videos issued by Basarnas showed the same overturned profile from a helicopter.

The cause is not settled. Weather is the first fact on the record. The captain described ten-foot seas. Investigators have not ruled out a technical failure or an error in loading. The vehicles on the car deck matter in that inquiry. A ferry that rolls with a heavy vehicle load behaves differently from a passenger-only hull.

Indonesia is an archipelago of some 17,000 islands. Sea travel is cheaper than flying and remains the ordinary way to move people and goods between Java and Kalimantan. The same waters have taken ships before. Overloading, ageing hulls, and monsoon weather sit in almost every after-action report. The gap between the written manifest and the real headcount is a standing problem for rescue planners, because they cannot be sure how many bodies they are looking for.

Syafii said search teams were assisted by tugboats and other passing vessels on Sunday, which is how 108 people left the water alive. The wreck itself had not been secured for a full internal search when Monday's briefing closed. Flooded compartments and the list of the hull limited access in the same way Philippine crews found on MV June Aster off Coron last week, a separate fire disaster that is still producing identification work.

The Java Sea crossing from Surabaya to Banjarmasin is a working route, not a tourist hop. Drivers ride with their trucks. The high count of vehicle assistants on this sailing is the detail that explains why so many names on the list belong to people who were not holiday passengers. That also shapes the search pattern. Rescuers look along drift lines for people who went into the water in the dark and for anyone still inside cabins and vehicle decks.

Heri Purwanto, head of the Banjarmasin Sea Port Authority, said the port moved as soon as the incident report arrived. All vessels in the search box were told to report any sign of people in the water. The navy, police, Basarnas and the ferry company each put boats in.

What happens next is a function of weather and of how long a person can survive in the Java Sea in September. If the missing are in the water, the window is short. If they are inside the hull, the question is access. Either way, the number 129 is the figure the families in Surabaya and Banjarmasin are waiting to see fall.