At least four people have lost their lives, and numerous others are missing after a ferry carrying 65 individuals sank while en route to the Indonesian tourist destination of Bali. Local police have confirmed these details. The vessel encountered its fate within the Bali Strait prior to midnight on Wednesday, during its journey from Banyuwangi, a city in East Java, to a port in northern Bali. According to the Surabaya search and rescue agency, Rama Samtama Putra, the police chief of Banyuwangi, reported that four fatalities and 23 survivors have been accounted for. The ferry was transporting 53 passengers, 12 crew members, and 22 vehicles, as the agency noted. The reason for the sinking remains unknown, but President Prabowo Subianto, who is on a trip to Saudi Arabia, has ordered an emergency response following a preliminary cause attributed to adverse weather conditions.
Many survivors who were rescued were unconscious after spending several hours adrift in severe waters. Nine rescue vessels, including two tugboats and two inflatable crafts, were deployed to find the missing persons, operating through waves reaching up to 2 meters in the darkness of the night. Four survivors managed to save themselves by using the ferry’s lifeboat and were located in the water on Thursday morning.
The ferry usually takes about an hour to travel from Java to Bali and is commonly used by people transporting cars between the islands. However, it is unclear whether any foreigners were on board when the sinking occurred. Due to the frequent discrepancy between the actual number of passengers and the manifest in Indonesia, there might be more unaccounted individuals. Maritime mishaps are sadly common in Indonesia, an archipelago of nearly 17,000 islands, often stem from lax safety standards and adverse weather conditions.
In March of the same year, a vessel carrying 16 individuals capsized off the coast of Bali, resulting in the death of an Australian woman and additional injuries. In 2018, over 150 individuals perished when a ferry sank in Situmaicera Lake on the island of Sumatra, which is one of the deepest lakes globally.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/03/bali-ferry-sinking-indonesia
