MV Matui sinks between Santo and Ambae with more than 30 still missing

Search boats off Vanuatu have left the open water and turned toward the south-east coast, where currents may have carried people from the MV Matui. Prime Minister Jotham Napat's office said on Sunday that 15 of those on board were alive, one body had been recovered, and more than 30 people were still missing. Later local counts put recovered dead at two, with a second body seen but not brought in because of swell.

The inter-island ferry left Santo at 6am on Friday for Ambae, about 96 kilometres away. Luganville MP Matai Seremaiah said it capsized around 9.30am between the two islands. Tui's Shipping operates the vessel. Napat's office wrote that the loss appears to be the result of strong winds and marine warnings not being heeded, and possibly of negligence including overloading of the vessel. An investigation has been opened.

Seremaiah said it took more than 30 hours for an organised boat search to start. He and others went out without instructions. A local pilot later gave coordinates. The late start met 2.5 to 3 metre swells and only a few hours of light. The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in New Caledonia sent a French Armed Forces aircraft on Sunday morning and said 12 people were located that day.

What the survivors were holding

Mark Turnbull, a pilot and doctor based on Gaua in Torba Province, was among the first in the air. He told RNZ Pacific that a 1,000-litre agricultural tank had come off the ferry. Survivors clinging to it said five people died on the first night. On the second day the group left the tank and split up to look for help. Turnbull called it a miracle that anyone lived.

Fifteen survivors were taken to the main hospital in Luganville. The government's Sunday statement said open-water search was being eased while crews worked the south-east coast. Vanuatu police, the Maritime Safety Authority and Tui Shipping Agency did not immediately answer Reuters.

The passenger count itself is still loose in the public record. Seremaiah put 45 people on the boat. The prime minister's office spoke of dozens of crew and passengers. Wire desks listing one dead, 12 rescued and more than 30 missing were working from the first government note. Those figures will move as bodies and survivors come ashore.

A second Pacific ferry in two days

The Matui went down a day after the much larger Virgo Transport 8 capsized in the Java Sea with 243 people. The two wrecks share weather, age of vessel and questions about loading. They do not share a government. Vanuatu's search depends on a small domestic fleet plus French aircraft from New Caledonia. Indonesia can put Basarnas ships and planes on an 8,540-ton ferry. The gap is visible in the 30-hour delay Seremaiah described.

Napat's office asked families to know that the nation stood with them. The sentence that will matter in Port Vila is the one about marine warnings and overload. If the investigation finds the Matui sailed into a posted warning with too many people or too much cargo, the next inter-island permit in Sanma will be written under that finding.

Until the missing list stops moving, the coast remains the search line. The French aircraft can cover a grid. The boats have to work the beaches where the current dumps wreckage. That is why the government shifted the hunt from open water to the south-east shore. It is also why the second night on a plastic tank, as Turnbull heard it, is the detail that will stay in the inquiry file.