In what has become a daily ritual, Sayed Habibi drives the 80 kilometres from Adelaide to Victor Harbour with his wife to search for the body of his teenage son who drowned on Father's Day.
Mehdi, who would have turned 17 five days later on 6 September, was taking photos on the cliffs of Granite Island in South Australia on a windy day.
At around 3pm, he got caught in choppy swells that dragged him into the rough waves from which he could not escape.
Even though his body disappeared, his family - in a sign of hope - marked his birthday with a cake.
"Mehdi is still missing. We go every day to Victor Harbour and other beach sites and come back but we couldn't find anything, we keep looking," Mr Habibi told AAP.
For Mr Habibi, 37, it's not the first time he has lost people at sea.
A member of the persecuted Seyyed Hazara religious minority, Mr Habibi boarded a rickety boat to Australia from Indonesia with more than 170 asylum-seekers in 2010.
"We had 173 people on the boat it was very scary but we still took the risk," he said.
Eventually, the boat was intercepted and he spent two years in immigration detention on Christmas Island before being released and given a permanent protection visa.
Refugees are much more likely to die from drowning compared to Australians who've grown up learning to swim, according to research published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare last year.
Between 2007 and 2020, the mortality rate for accidental drowning was 2.4 times higher for refugees than the broader Australian population.
Males accounted for 90 per cent of all accidental drowning deaths amongst humanitarian entrants.
The National Drowning Report released in August by the Royal Life Saving Society found there were 323 drowning deaths in 2023/24 nationwide, a result that was 16 per cent higher than the ten-year average.
Mr Habibi's wife and children lived apart from him for more than a decade in Pakistan, which is estimated to host about 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees.
In 2014, Mr Habibi, who owns a travel agency, applied for reunification and they were finally able to join him in Adelaide late last year.
"They were very happy to come here because it's safe compared to Pakistan so they can study and grow up peacefully."
A fundraiser by community supporters has been set up to help the family.
Mr Habibi said his eldest son had big plans after finishing school, starting with taking up a plumbing apprenticeship.
"Inshallah (God willing) we find him," Mr Habibi said.
