Early yesterday morning a major sea disaster struck again. Superferry 9 sank near Zamboanga. There were 847 passengers, 117 crew members and 4 sea marshals aboard. This makes a total of 968 human beings.

Reports from the National Disaster Coordinating Committee and the Philippine Coast Guard vary. According to the latter, 723 passengers were rescued and 242 were missing as of 7 P.M. last night. Secretary Teodoro reports that less than 100 are missing.

The passengers included 28 crew members of Star Cinema who were on board with filming equipment, vehicles and costumes.

It is our fervent prayer that the current death toll of 5 passengers will not rise dramatically as updated reports come in.

Very soon, multimedia will have more details. Disasters always produce heart rending human interest stories about children separated from their parents, couples rent apart by waves, old people unable to survive the shock and terror of jumping off the ship, and of course the inevitable love stories. Feeling “Titanic” all over again. In the meantime, Kate Winslett has grown fat and Leonardo de Caprio has aged. Still, sea disasters strike with fearsome regularity.

Sea travel: sink or swim? During the sixties, I used to travel by boat from Dumaguete to Manila for my U.P. studies. Not every Juan or Juana could take the plane in those days. It was such fun, especially during summer and December. Students from the Visayas and Mindanao literally took days to reach Manila by slow boat. One could make friends from Manila to Cebu, acquire a boyfriend or girl friend on reaching Bohol, quarrel in the Dumaguete pier, and break up the relationship upon landing in Davao, Cagayan de Oro or Zamboanga.

True, there were typhoons even in those days but I don’t recall an interisland boat overflowing with passengers ever sinking. There were stories of bancas disappearing during typhoons, but even these did not happen often.

It seems these horrific disasters are relatively recent phenomena. Ever since the nightmare of Dona Paz in 1987 when more than 3,000 people died, our country has been beset with sea disasters. Only last year, when the Princess of the Stars sank near Romblon, only 58 out of 850 passengers survived. Elsewhere, barges and passenger bancas plying small islands have disappeared during typhoons without ever catching the attention of national media.

Regulatory governance for sea travel. Cynics can already imagine the cycle of activities which will follow in the wake of this latest sea disaster. Once the survivors have been counted, the dead accounted for and the families paid off, the hearings and investigations will commence.

The hearings, initially covered by media, will try to determine who is at fault: the shipping line, the boat officials, the Coast Guard, the Weather Bureau or God? The output of the investigations will be more investigations. If we are lucky there will be volumes and volumes of recommendations. Afterwards, media gets bored and moves on to the next story. Perhaps, Caparas will make a movie but he is more into massacres. He prefers a lot of blood and not bloated, rotting, drowned bodies.

Everything will be quiet until another boat sinks along with its passengers.

Just a few points: First, we should expect more sea disasters. Perhaps it is because the boats are getting older and the crew more careless. Remember that disaster where the ship officials were gambling even as another boat was inexorably heading in their direction? Could it be that shipping companies overload their boats? Or maybe those in charge of regulating shipping companies are getting lax? Or is it climate change venting its rage on our hapless islands?

Second, it is clear that regulatory governance of sea travel is very weak. For a country of over 7,100 islands it is fairly obvious that the majority of our inhabitants mostly travel by sea. Nonetheless regulation of maritime travel is only remembered whenever there is a sea disaster.

Hearings are conducted to determine the immediate cause of a disaster. There is no effort to move on to the next step which is the formulation of policy to prevent repeats of the same tragedies.

Why the lack of interest in regulating maritime travel? Is it because our political leaders and bureaucrats are mainly from Luzon? It is true that those from Luzon hardly take boats. Many of them have never taken a boat ride. Even policymakers from the Visayas and Mindanao only take planes .

Who travel by boat? Maids, factory workers, farm hands, poor students. Families with a lot of luggage. Local tourists. They need to be protected. Not every Juan and Juana takes the plane. Visayans and Mindanaoans take boats.