Naval divers in the Philippines found bodies but no survivors today when they finally managed to enter the upturned hulk of the ferry that sank in a typhoon.
Resucers who swam inside the wreck of the MV Princess of the Stars found the bodies of passengers wearing life jackets, trapped in air pockets almost 72 hours after the ship went down.
The scene inside the 23,824-tonne ferry was so dark that the navy said it was impossible to say how many bodies were there. The corpses had turned white after so long in the water.
The fear is that with only 33 survivors so far and about 30 bodies discovered floating in the sea near the island of Masbate, the ship has become a mass grave for the rest of the 863 people who were on board.
Two bloated corpses - one thought to be a crewman who was clutching a radio - were cut free from a tangle of cables and brought to the surface.
Rescuers said there was virtually no hope of finding anyone alive as even those who had found pockets would probably have suffocated when the air ran out.
"It will be a miracle if we find survivors," said a Philippines coastguard official.
The effort has now switched to recovering the bodies from inside the hull, though it remains a difficult and dangerous operation for the 20 divers who had smashed windows to gain access to the ship's bowels.
An oil slick has already formed around the ferry whose bows are visible above the water on a sandbank several miles off the island of Sibuyan, where villagers have gathered on the shore to watch.
Divers could decide to cut into the hull to bring out the bodies, but this might cause the estimated 100,000 litres of heavy "bunker" fuel oil to leak. Another option would be to weight the corpses to remove them from below.
As the operation continued, helicopters from a UN naval ship discovered a further nine bodies floating in the sea as it searched for survivors in life rafts.
The ferry's owner, Sulpicio Lines, offered to fly a relative from each bereaved family to Cebu in an effort to identify the bodies of those who perished in Typhoon Fengshen.