Labuan Bajo, Indonesia — The search for the missing Spanish football coach and his two children entered a critical fifth day on Tuesday, with authorities deploying a coordinated fleet of professional divers and advanced technology across a widening area of Komodo National Park. The operation follows the recovery of a child’s body and pieces of the sunken vessel’s hull earlier this week.
As the mission shifts increasingly toward recovery, eleven divers from local commercial dive centres and the national search and rescue agency have been strategically divided into three Search and Rescue Units (SRUs). Each team is focusing on a specific zone: the waters north and south of Serai Island, and the eastern waters off Padar Island—the primary transit route of the ill-fated KM Putri Sakinah.
A Multi-Pronged Search Operation
The underwater effort is being supported by a significant surface presence. Twelve vessels are combing the coastlines of nearby islands, while thermal drones scan from above to detect any signs not visible to the naked eye. Beneath the surface, the police water unit has deployed seabobs (underwater scooters) and side-scan sonar equipment in an attempt to locate the main wreckage of the vessel on the seabed.
“To this point, the joint SAR team is still exerting maximum effort to carry out the operation,” said Fathur Rahman, head of the Maumere SAR office, acknowledging the challenging conditions.
The Discovery of Debris and the Ongoing Mission
The discovery of a section of the ship’s hull on Tuesday morning confirms the vessel’s breakup and helps investigators understand drift patterns. The search now specifically targets Valencia CF women’s B-team coach Fernando Martín Carreras and his two sons. His wife and youngest daughter survived the Friday night sinking, which occurred after the vessel reportedly lost engine power approximately 30 minutes into a routine evening transit.
For the international dive community and expatriates in Bali, many of whom are familiar with the local operators now involved in the search, the scale of the response underscores the severity of the incident. The collaboration between professional recreational divers, government rescuers, and police tech units illustrates a community-wide effort to provide answers for a grieving family, even as hope for a rescue has faded. The search continues, now a race against time, currents, and the vastness of the Flores Sea.
