JINDO, South Korea — The grim work of recovering bodies from the submerged South Korea ferry proceeded rapidly today, with the official death toll reaching 150, though a government official said divers must now rip through cabin walls to retrieve more victims.

The victims are overwhelmingly students of a single high school in Ansan, near Seoul. More than three-quarters of the 323 students are dead or missing, while nearly two-thirds of the other 153 people on board the ferry Sewol when it sank one week ago survived.

Even with about 150 people still missing, the funeral halls in Ansan are already full, Oh Sang-Yoon of the governmentwide emergency task force center said. The center “is taking measures to accommodate additional bodies by placing mortuary refrigerators at the funeral halls in Ansan,” and directing families to funeral homes in nearby cities, he said.

CANBERRA, Australia — Unidentified material that has washed ashore in southwestern Australia is being examined for any link to the lost Malaysian plane, authorities said today.Police secured the material, which washed ashore 6 miles east of Augusta in Western Australia state, the search coordination center said in a statement. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is examining photographs to assess whether further investigation is needed and if the material is relevant to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.Augusta is near Australia's southwestern tip, about 190 miles from Perth, where the search has been headquartered.Meanwhile, Australia's prime minister said officials plan to bring in more powerful sonar equipment that can delve deeper beneath the Indian Ocean.The search coordination center said a robotic submarine, the U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 80 percent of the 120-square-mile seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor. Nothing of interest had been found.