It was initially listing at 40 degrees to the right, now it is down to 35 degrees.'

'The captain declared abandon ship and this is more of a precautionary measure instead of waiting for the vessel to topple over,' he said. 'Everybody was given their life jackets. There is a very good chance that everyone will be rescued.'

Sea travel is a major mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.

In June 2008, a passenger ferry sank off the central Philippines at the height of Typhoon Fengshen, drowning more than 800 passengers.

The country was the site of the world's worst peacetime shipping disaster in 1987, when more than 4,000 people perished in a collision between the ferry Dona Paz and an oil tanker off the central island of Mindoro just before Christmas.