Hopes of finding other missing M/V Princess of the Stars victims dim

MANILA, Philippines – Divers retrieving bodies trapped inside the sunken M/V Princess of the Stars said yesterday that hopes to find other missing passengers and crew dimmed as their operations were about to be completed.

Divers retrieved six more bodies from Deck B of the ship, bringing to 122 the total number of those already recovered.

Out of the 864 people reported on board the ill-fated ferry, about 515 have remained missing.

The divers’ supervisor, Jorge Ponce, said their operations were already 90 percent complete.

The 18 divers of the salvaging firm Harbor Star has finished searching through Deck C or the economy section and were wrapping up their retrieval operations at Deck B, he said.

He admitted that after their weeklong search that started last Oct. 26, it seemed that they would not be able to locate all the missing bodies.

“It might not even reach 200. If the report is true that there were 500 people missing, if they were still on board the ship then we should have found their bodies when we were at Deck C,” he said.

Divers started yesterday looking for the remains of crewmembers of the Princess of the Stars, which capsized at the height of typhoon “Frank” last June 21 near Sibuyan Island in Romblon.

Ponce said they have finished combing through the passenger cabins located at Deck B of the capsized vessel.

“We have combed through almost 90 percent of Deck B that consisted of the passengers’ cabin, but we still have to search through the crew’s accommodation, which is 10 percent of target at Deck B,” he said.

However, Ponce said they would still have “confirmation dives where we would conduct surveys grid by grid to make sure that we have covered all the areas.”

Harbor Star project manager Rod Bella earlier said it was possible that some of the passengers jumped overboard just before the ship sank.

The divers, despite seeing and retrieving bodies already in an advanced state of decomposition, were reportedly doing all right, Ponce said. “They handled themselves very well.”

The winds at the site of the sunken ship were stronger and water was rougher than in previous days, Ponce said. – Evelyn Macairan, Helen Flores