Singapore: An Indonesian search and rescue crew will give itself two more days to try to find an Australian resident who disappeared while spearfishing in the Mentawai Islands.

Shaun Daly, 26, has not been seen since going missing on Saturday morning about 500 metres off the southern tip of Sipura Island, 260km west of Sumatra.

Shaun Daly, who lives in Cairns, went missing on Saturday.

His family chartered a plane this week to help with the search, which is being led by rescue agency Basarnas with assistance from the Indonesian navy, police and a growing army of volunteers.

On Wednesday drones scoured the coastline of the island, a renowned destination for surfers and marine adventurers, as a team of more divers arrived from Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province, to join more than a dozen boats in the search party.

“We will comb the shores, go to the sea again and dive,” said Akmal, the Basarnas chief in Mentawai district.

“In accordance to our regulations, the search will go for seven days, meaning until Friday. After that we will have to evaluate whether to continue the search. We must always have hope. We do hope to find him in whatever condition he is in because we have additional divers joining our search team.”

Daly has been living near Bali during the pandemic.

Daly, an Australian permanent resident who grew up in Zimbabwe, had been free diving in waters near the Mentawai Strait, where South African Brett Archibald miraculously survived 28 hours in the ocean after falling overboard from a surf charter boat during a storm in 2013.

Australian Tony “Doris” Eltherington, who skippered the charter boat that famously rescued Archibald, has been part of the search crew trying to find Daly.

But after more than four days, even those desperately looking for him are not optimistic.

“I don’t even know what to think. I’ve cried that many times,” said his older brother Martin, who has helped organise the search effort from his home in Karratha, Western Australia.

“We’re just trying to organise as many boats and divers as we can to cover as much area as we can. They’re all just legends, these guys.”

The family, which has raised more than $55,000 in an online funding appeal for the search-and-rescue bid, has also twice this week hired a plane from Padang for $13,730 per day to look for Daly from the air.

Daly had been sleeping at a homestay in the town of Katiet since arriving in the Mentawai Islands last week and had ventured out spearfishing in a boat on his own on Saturday.

The sea floor in the area where he was fishing is about 15 metres below the surface. But the depth increases significantly nearby and because Daly was wearing a weight belt, a common piece of equipment for experienced spear fishermen, it was feared he might have blacked out and in the strong current descended far deeper.

The search mission has stretched 50 nautical miles to the east of Sipora Island and 25 nautical miles to its west in the Indian Ocean.

Tim Everingham, an Australian who operates a surf charter company out of Padang and has been aboard Eltherington’s boat during the search, said another group of divers was arriving from Padang on Thursday to scour the sea floor where Daly was last seen.

The youngest of four brothers, Daly had been living in Cairns, where he worked in the fishing industry, but was a regular visitor to Indonesia and had been based in Nusa Lembongan, an island south-east of Bali, after being unable to get back to Australia during the pandemic.

His brother Martin said Daly had finally managed to book a seat on a flight back to Australia in November.

The UK embassy in Jakarta is coordinating with Basarnas as Daly is a British national.

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