LABUAN BAJO, Indonesia — The discovery came not from a coordinated fleet of helicopters or rescue boats, but from a quiet, ordinary act: a man fishing for octopus in the timeless waters of Komodo National Park.
On Tuesday afternoon, as the sun climbed high over Pede Beach on Komodo Island, local fisherman Saiful made a sighting that would shift the final phase of a multinational search operation. There, stranded on the shore, was the battered hull of the KM Putri Sakinah, the traditional wooden pinisi schooner that vanished over a week ago with a Spanish football coach and his family aboard.
The first visuals from the scene, obtained by Hey Bali News, show two fishermen standing cautiously on the vessel’s sundeck, a haunting image of a holiday vessel turned tomb. It was Saiful who first peered inside the open doorway of the beached ship.
“There was one body inside,” he said, describing a scene of eerie stillness. He reported no other victims visible within the compromised hull.
The body, found shortly after 1 p.m. local time, is believed to be that of one of the two missing sons of Fernando Martin Carreras, the late Valencia CF women’s football coach. Carreras and his 12-year-old daughter were recovered last week following the catastrophic sinking on the night of Dec. 26. His wife and youngest daughter, aged 7, survived.
The grim find by the local fishermen preceded the formal arrival of the joint Search and Rescue (SAR) teams, underscoring the vital, often unseen role played by coastal communities in such maritime tragedies. The fishermen immediately alerted authorities, setting in motion a formal recovery process.
For the global community in Bali and the many travelers for whom Labuan Bajo is a gateway to the Komodo dragons, the tragedy resonates deeply. It is a stark juxtaposition against the backdrop of one of the world’s most breathtaking marine parks, a reminder of the sea’s dual nature as a source of life and profound peril.
If the body is formally identified as one of Carreras’s sons, only one child will remain missing. The discovery, while offering a fragment of closure to a grieving family, etches a final, sorrowful note to a holiday disaster that has spanned the turn of the year.
The search continues, its focus now narrowed to a single soul, as the clear Komodo waters yield their secrets, one painful piece at a time.
— Hey Bali (@Heybaliinfo) January 6, 2026