LABUAN BAJO, Indonesia — The intensive search for a Spanish football coach and his two sons, missing since a tourist boat sank in Komodo National Park a week ago, expanded into the dense coastal mangroves of nearby islands on Friday. Despite deploying thermal drones and sonar across a vast maritime search zone, rescue coordinators reported no new findings as the operation entered a critical phase.
“The results of the search on this eighth day are negative,” stated Fathur Rahman, Head of the Maumere SAR Office and the mission coordinator, delivering a somber update on the hunt for Fernando Martin Carreras, the coach of Valencia CF’s women’s B-team, and his children.
With the official search window now extended by only three days, Friday marked the first day of that extension, leaving a narrowing timeline of 48 hours. The joint task force of 58 personnel across 11 vessels combed both open water and challenging shoreline habitats.
“The search reached into the mangrove forests and the shallow coastal waters of the islands, but so far, there is nothing,” Fathur explained.
The multi-pronged operation utilized every available asset. Surface sweeps were conducted by vessels like the Basarnas ship KN Puntadewa, covering over 15 nautical miles. Below the surface, side-scan sonar equipment from the water police scanned the seabed, while above, thermal drones scanned inaccessible shorelines and vegetation for heat signatures, a method crucial for detecting anyone who may have reached land.
The family was aboard the pinisi-style vessel KM Putri Sakinah when it capsized and sank in the Padar Strait on December 26. While the coach’s wife and youngest child survived, and one daughter was recovered deceased last week, the fate of Mr. Carreras and his two sons remains a painful mystery.
The shift into the tangled root systems of the mangrove forests highlights the search’s increasing complexity. These ecosystems, vital for coastal health, present a formidable challenge for rescuers, obscuring visibility and complicating access.
As the sun set on the eighth day, the mission persisted under the weight of a grim reality: time, along with the powerful currents of the Flores Sea, remains the search team’s most formidable adversary. The coming two days will determine the immediate future of one of Indonesia’s most prominent and tragic recent maritime searches.
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