Six people died and 107 were rescued after Virgo Transport 8 lost contact in the Java Sea, while 130 others were still missing as rescuers kept searching on Sunday. Indonesia's search and rescue agency said the passenger ferry was carrying 243 people when the alarm was raised, turning a routine crossing into a fast-moving rescue effort that stretched across the sea route between Surabaya and Banjarmasin.
The ship had left Surabaya at 10:33 on Saturday and was due in Banjarmasin at 14:00 on Sunday. It was last reported about 150km south of Banjarmasin around 02:00 local time, before authorities received an initial distress report at 04:10 from PT Virgo. By then, a joint task force had been formed, with ships and a helicopter sent out and 280 personnel deployed. All vessels in the Java Sea area were asked to watch for signs of passengers.
That casualty count leaves the central arithmetic of the disaster unresolved. Rescue crews had already pulled 107 people from the water, six were confirmed dead, and 130 were still missing on Sunday — a total that matches the 243 people reported on board, but not the split between who was still at sea and who may already have been found elsewhere. The gap matters because the search is not only about extending the sweep; it is about establishing where the missing are and whether the count will keep changing as more survivors are identified.
Families were already waiting for answers at the ports. Rusmilawati said eight of her relatives were travelling back to Banjarmasin after visiting the tombs of several Islamic scholars in Java. She said they had flown there first, then chose to return by ship, and described the night sea conditions as frightening. Relatives were still being directed toward an operations post set up in the Trisakti Port area on Sunday morning, where rescuers were trying to match names, faces and fragments of information against the evolving list of survivors.
The search now turns on a narrow but brutal question: whether the remaining missing passengers are still in the Java Sea or whether the final figures will settle somewhere else. Ahmad Supandi survived and was later rescued by MV Haida, a reminder that the rescue effort was still producing results even after the death toll was confirmed. For the families waiting at the port, that meant hope had not disappeared, but it had become sharply limited.
