An 80-year-old woman has been found dead on a remote island in the Great Barrier Reef after she “failed to board” a cruise ship.<\/p>\n
Queensland Police said the woman was reported missing just before midnight on Saturday, after the Coral Expeditions cruise visited Lizard Island, off the coast of Cooktown, 320 kilometres north of Cairns.<\/p>\n
Emergency services launched a search the following morning on Sunday, with Nautilus Aviation locating the woman’s body shortly after.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a statement, Coral Expeditions chief executive Mark Fifield confirmed the “tragic death” of a passenger on the Coral Adventurer during an excursion to the island.<\/p>\n
He said the crew notified authorities the woman was missing on Saturday.<\/p>\n
A “land and sea search” later took place.<\/p>\n
They were later notified by police that the woman had been found dead on the island on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Mr Fifield said the company was working closely with authorities.<\/p>\n
“While investigations into the incident are continuing, we are deeply sorry that this has occurred and are offering our full support to the woman’s family,” Mr Fifield said.<\/p>\n
“The Coral [Expeditions] team have been in contact with the woman’s family, and we will continue to offer support to them through this difficult process,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The woman was found dead on Lizard Island after she failed to board the Coral Expeditions cruise ship. (Supplied: Coral Expeditions\/Facebook)<\/p>\n
Cook Shire Mayor Robyn Holmes said the council was aware of a tragic incident at Lizard Island.<\/p>\n
“[We] extend our sincerest condolences to the woman’s family, friends and all those affected by this tragedy,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We acknowledge that this is a very distressing time and extend our appreciation to all emergency service personnel and agencies involved.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, Tourism Tropical North Queensland also said it extended sympathies to the woman’s family and that as there was an active investigation, it was “awaiting further details”.<\/p>\n
Police were investigating, but said the death was being treated as “sudden and non-suspicious”.<\/p>\n
A report will be prepared for the coroner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An 80-year-old woman has been found dead on a remote island in the Great Barrier Reef after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,146187,128],"class_list":["post-245906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-lizard-island","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}