Bayu Wardoyo tends to skip the 6 a.m. breakfast of Indonesian fried rice served to divers on the ship searching for wreckage of the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet that crashed in the Java Sea on Jan. 9. He prefers coffee, light snacks and some fruit to prepare for the long day ahead.
Later in the morning, kitted out in a black wetsuit and weighed down by diving paraphernalia, he boards a speedboat and heads out under heavy monsoon clouds to the day’s search area. Once there, Wardoyo attaches his scuba regulator and rolls overboard into waters filled with fresh tragedy.
Indonesia has been the site of several air disasters over the past decade, and the 49-year-old has been involved in more than his fair share of undersea searches. He worked on recovery efforts after an AirAsia jetliner carrying 162 people went down in the Java Sea in December 2014. Less than four years later, he returned to the same waters to hunt for wreckage and bodies in the wake of a Lion Air crash that claimed 189 lives. Now he’s back there again, after Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 plunged into the ocean with 62 people on board. Among them were seven children and three infants.
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