Search for 129 people continues around an overturned Java Sea ferry

Indonesian search teams were still working on Tuesday around the overturned hull of Virgo Transport 8, a passenger ferry that lost contact in the Java Sea in the early hours of Sunday. The ship was carrying 243 people, 213 passengers and 30 crew, plus 89 vehicles, on the overnight run from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan. Six people have been confirmed dead. More than 100 have been pulled from the water. About 129 remained unaccounted for as the search entered its third day.

The captain reported waves of up to three metres and a heavy list to starboard before the radio went quiet at about 2 a.m. local time. A distress call reached authorities around two hours later. A helicopter later found the ferry floating upside down in the Masalembo waters, about 150 kilometres, or 81 nautical miles, south of Banjarmasin. Transport Minister Dudy Purwagandhi corrected an early report that the ship had sunk. Aerial crews, he said, could see the hull on the surface.

Basarnas, the national search and rescue agency, built a joint force with the navy, maritime police and civilian ships. By Monday the deployment had grown to more than 600 personnel, 17 vessels and several aircraft. Divers and navy underwater drones were sent to look inside and around the inverted hull. Rough seas and current kept slowing the work. Families waited at Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin. Survivors told officials that people ran for the upper deck and fought for life jackets as the ship went over.

The manifest listed 59 adult passengers, one child, and a large group of drivers and vehicle assistants moving cars between the islands, plus ship staff. Indonesian ferry counts often differ from paper lists. Officials have treated 243 as the working number. The operator is PT Virgo. The ship left Surabaya at 10:33 on Saturday and had been due in Banjarmasin at 14:00 on Sunday.

Ferry losses in the Java Sea are not rare. Weather, loading and hull age combine on short sea routes that carry both people and vehicles. This case is larger than most because the ship did not go down. An inverted hull can trap air and people. It can also break up. That is why the drones and divers are concentrated on one object rather than a wide debris field.

Agency chief Mohammad Syafii said on Monday that teams still hoped to find survivors. Each additional day in warm, moving water cuts that hope. The operational choice on Tuesday was unchanged: stay on the hull, keep the navy drones in the water, and treat every new sighting as a chance until the count of the missing finally matches the count of the dead and the saved.