JAKARTA: Four Australians paddling on their surfboards and 2 Indonesians were rescued in the sea off Indonesia’s west on Tuesday, nearly two days after their boat was under bad weather.
One Indonesian remains missing, according to an official.
Octavianto, local rescue agency chief, said that rescuers found some of the embroiled drifting at sea using Styrofoam and surfboards.
Videos widely circulated on Australian media showed the Australians, 3 males and a female, waving and paddling on their surfboards as rescuers approached, AFP reported.
No clear information was available about how or where the two Indonesian nationals were found.
Two boats carrying a total of seventeen people left Nias Island for the private island of Pinang on Sunday.
But one of the vessels, which carried the 4 Australians and 3 Indonesians, could not arrive, leading authorities to start a search-and-rescue operation on Monday.
Search Operation for Missing Indonesian National
Octavianto said that rescuers are still searching for the Indonesian national who remains missing.
Marine accidents are frequent in the Southeast Asian archipelago country of around seventeen thousand islands, where people rely on small boats and ferries to travel despite poor safety standards.
In 2018, over 150 people drowned when a boat sank in one of the world’s deepest lakes on Sumatra.
In 2022, a ferry with more than eight hundred people ran aground in shallow waters near the province of East Nusa Tenggara and remained stuck for two days before being rescued. However, no one was hurt.
