Vanuatu scales back the open-water search for MV Matui

Vanuatu's prime minister's office said on Sunday that search teams were easing off the open ocean and shifting toward the south-east coast, where currents may have carried people from the ferry MV Matui. The vessel sank on Friday in rough weather on the run between Espiritu Santo and Ambae in the country's north.

The office of Prime Minister Jotham Napat put the latest tally at 15 people accounted for alive, one body recovered and more than 30 still missing. Earlier local reports had given a complement of 34 passengers and 11 crew, 45 people in all. ABC, working from police comments to the national broadcaster VBCTC, first reported seven rescued and 38 unaccounted for. Those figures have since been revised by the government statement.

Who pulled people from the water

Police said one survivor reached shore on Santo and was taken to a village by a diver. Former foreign minister Matai Seremaiah, travelling on another vessel, LC Mahalia, posted that he had picked up several people. Flying doctor Mark Turnbull used his aircraft to drop life jackets and to mark survivors for boats. A plane later spotted two more people, but darkness made a pickup hard.

The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in New Caledonia said it was helping. A French Armed Forces aircraft joined the search on Sunday morning. Communities on the Ambae coast were told to watch the shoreline and to help anyone who came in.

The operator is Tui's Shipping, also named in some reports as Tui Shipping Agency. Police, the Maritime Safety Authority and the company did not immediately answer questions from Reuters.

The government's first explanation

Napat's office said 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." A full investigation has been opened. That sentence is already the political core of the story. It puts weather, a ignored warning and a possible overload on the same page before investigators have published a load sheet.

Inter-island boats are how most people in Vanuatu move cargo, family and produce between volcanic islands that lack frequent air service. When a boat goes down between Santo and Ambae, the missing list is a village list. The government told families that "the nation stands with you." The operational choice on Sunday was more concrete: stop burning fuel on empty water and walk the coast where the current actually goes.

Vanuatu sits about 1,750 kilometres east of Australia. Distance is why a New Caledonia aircraft matters. It is also why the first 48 hours decide whether anyone else comes ashore alive. After that the search becomes a recovery.

The investigation will have to answer three questions that the Sunday statement already named: what warning was in force, what the manifest said, and what the boat was actually carrying when it left Santo.