Search for missing Long Beach surfer Daniel Bobis continues

The urgent search for missing Long Beach High School teacher and local surfer Daniel Bobis — who disappeared off the coast of southern Sumatra on Sunday during a surfing trip to Indonesia with his wife, Rachel — continued on Tuesday, as search crews combed the remote area where the popular Long Beach resident was last seen.

Bobis, 32, was reported missing on July 24, after surfing near the tiny enclave of Damai with his wife and a friend, Brian Lonergan, at around 9 a.m. local time.

“It was just a day like any other here,” Lonergan told the New York Post. “Danny had just taken a wave before me, I was further outside. I noticed as I came through that I couldn’t see him, and a few minutes later his board washed up on the shore.”

The trio had been traveling and surfing in exotic locations since June. In an email exchange with the Herald on July 7, Bobis wrote that he was traveling in Sri Lanka and was heading to Indonesia afterward. He was planning to return home in mid-August. According to information his wife posted on Facebook on Sunday, the leash on his board broke as he surfed in an area known for its 12-foot waves.

“We looked all day but it is now Sunday evening here,” Rachel wrote in an effort to generate help in locating her husband. “There is a dive team going out tomorrow to look for him. We are trying to get a helicopter but it is very difficult here.”

Bobis’s disappearance has made headlines across the globe, as family and friends called for an intensified search effort and urged the U.S. and Indonesian governments to provide a rescue helicopter and divers. Hundreds gathered on the boardwalk at Laurelton Boulevard on Sunday, where he often surfed, for a candlelight vigil.

Friends said that initial search efforts proved difficult due to rough weather and the remote location, northwest of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, and roughly six hours from the nearest airport. In the days since his disappearance, a Facebook page, Daniel Bobis Info, was created to update friends and family, and many have expressed their support for his family and written that they are praying for his safe return. A fund has also been created to defray the costs of the search effort.