Argentina

Buenos Aires, September 13, 2026. The Indonesian ferry Virgo Transport 8, which departed on Saturday at 10:13 a.m. local time from Surabaya to Banjarmasin on the island of Borneo, stopped transmitting its signals between 1 and 2 a.m. on Sunday in the Java Sea, report Clarín, Infobae, and Perfil, citing the Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas. The captain had reported waves of 2 to 3 meters before the ship began to list, according to I Putu Sudayana, head of the Banjarmasin rescue office. The alert was transmitted by the general manager of the shipping company PT Virgo, Yoel Rihi, about two hours after contact was lost.

According to the manifest, 243 people were on board -- 213 passengers and 30 crew members -- as well as 89 vehicles, although, note the Argentine media, the actual number of passengers often differs from the official register in Indonesia. On Sunday, authorities confirmed that 102 to 103 people had been evacuated, including one deceased, while around 140 people remained missing according to the passenger list. Eight vessels, including four from the navy, and two helicopters were participating in the search around the last known position of the ship, 148 kilometers from the Basirih rescue pier.

The Argentine press links the episode to a broader problem: "maritime accidents are common in Indonesia due to precarious infrastructure, overloading of passengers and cargo, lax compliance with safety regulations, and inclement weather," recalls Infobae, highlighting that boats remain an essential means of transportation in an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and 270 million inhabitants. Perfil mentions the 2018 shipwreck, which killed over 150 people, as a sign that the issue of maritime regulations remains unresolved.

For Buenos Aires, the focus is less on the individual responsibility of the shipping company than on this repeated pattern -- overloading, weather, insufficient controls -- which regularly affects inter-island connections in Indonesia.