{"id":380554,"date":"2025-12-30T14:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380554\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T14:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:12:16","slug":"heres-what-we-know-about-the-coral-adventurer-the-cruise-ship-that-ran-aground-in-png","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380554\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s what we know about the Coral Adventurer, the cruise ship that ran aground in PNG"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coral Adventurer was carrying 80 tourists into the remote reaches of Papua New Guinea when it came to an abrupt halt on a reef off the Pacific nation’s coast.<\/p>\n

It was about 90 kilometres from the city of Lae, PNG’s second-largest city, when it hit strong sea currents and ran aground on the coral reef.<\/p>\n

Passengers and the ship’s 43 staff escaped injury \u00a0\u2014 but despite efforts to refloat the Coral Adventurer, it remains stuck off the coast of PNG nearly four days later.<\/p>\n

Here’s what we know about the voyage and the incident that left the 93 metre-long ship and its 120 people aboard stranded in the remote waters of Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n

Where did the ship run aground?<\/p>\n

The ship was passing Dregerhafen Point at 5:30am on Saturday local time when it ran aground north of PNG’s Nussing Island.<\/p>\n

Vessel tracking data show the Coral Adventurer first neared the coast of PNG on December 20 after leaving Cairns two days earlier.<\/p>\n

It then passed between Normanby Island and Fergusson Island and moved north before hugging the coast of Morobe Province before it ran aground near Finschhafen.<\/p>\n

That’s about 90km from Lae, the capital of Morobe province.<\/p>\n

Morobe’s provincial governor, Rainbo Paita, told the ABC the Coral Adventurer ran aground while taking a route not usually taken by local operators.<\/p>\n

\"satellite<\/p>\n

The Coral Adventurer ran aground on a reef near Finschhafen in PNG. (Supplied: VesselFinder)<\/p>\n

“Local boat operators know the reef is very high there,” he said.<\/p>\n

The ABC approached Coral Expeditions, but it declined to respond to Mr Paita’s comments.<\/p>\n

Where are the passengers?<\/p>\n

The passengers began travelling home to Australia on Tuesday after Coral Expeditions announced it would fly them back on a charter flight.<\/p>\n

They disembarked the Coral Adventurer in the morning and took a passenger boat, the MV Ialibu, to Lae, reaching the city by afternoon local time.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The passengers of the Coral Adventurer were transported on passenger vessel the MV Ialibu to Lae. (ABC News: Scott Waide)<\/p>\n

The passengers were expected to fly on to Cairns.<\/p>\n

Earlier, on Sunday, they had disembarked the Coral Adventurer and were transported to Gingala village for community-hosted sightseeing activities, while a tugboat attempted to free the vessel.<\/p>\n

\"Tourists<\/p>\n

Passengers of the Coral Adventurer went onshore while efforts were made to refloat the cruise ship. (Supplied: Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary)<\/p>\n

What do we know about the cruise ship?<\/p>\n

The Coral Adventurer is one of three small cruise ships operated by Cairns-based cruise company Coral Expeditions.<\/p>\n

The vessel was built by Norway-based shipbuilders Vard in 2019 in a Vietnam shipyard for $119 million.<\/p>\n

\"White<\/p>\n

The Coral Adventurer is one of three small cruise ships operated by Coral Expeditions. (Supplied: Coral Expeditions\/Facebook)<\/p>\n

It can carry 120 passengers, has 60 staterooms, and more than 1,000 square metres of open deck space.<\/p>\n

The ship, which is 5,500 in gross tonnage, was on a 60-day cruise around Australia in October when a passenger allegedly left behind died on a Great Barrier Reef island.<\/p>\n

The Coral Adventurer ran aground in PNG about two months after the death of 80-year-old tourist Suzanne Rees<\/a> on the Great Barrier Reef’s Lizard Island.<\/p>\n

Who is Coral Expeditions?<\/p>\n

Coral Expeditions is a Queensland-based company that has specialised in small ship expedition-style cruises to remote areas including the Kimberley and the Pacific Islands.<\/p>\n

It describes itself as Australia’s largest local passenger cruise line and is headquartered in Cairns.<\/p>\n

The company runs multi-day cruises around Australia including Tasmania, Western Australia, and Cape York and internationally through Indonesian islands.<\/p>\n

Stranded cruise ship passengers begin journey home<\/a><\/p>\n

Passengers of an Australian cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Papua New Guinea have begun their journey home, as efforts to free the ship remain unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Coral Expeditions is owned by the NRMA, who first acquired shares in 2021 before taking full ownership in 2023.<\/p>\n

It took 6,700 passengers for 77,600 nights at sea and grew its revenue by 11.4 per cent in 2025, partly because it expanded its itineraries, according to the NRMA’s annual report.<\/p>\n

The report also said the NRMA board’s audit and risk committee conducted a “deep dive on safety” when operating in international waters and made recommendations.<\/p>\n

Besides the Coral Adventurer, the company also operates a “sister-ship” the Coral Geographer, and a smaller Coral Discoverer, built in 2005, for exploring Australia’s remote coastlines.<\/p>\n

What’s next for the vessel?<\/p>\n

Professional divers have inspected the vessel underwater and found no evidence of critical external damage yet.<\/p>\n

But the Coral Adventurer remains stranded on the reef despite a three-day effort to free it.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Divers have found no evidence yet of major damage to the Coral Adventurer. (Supplied: Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary)<\/p>\n

A tugboat from PNG company Pacific Towing arrived on the scene about midday on Sunday to try refloating the vessel.<\/p>\n

Those early attempts failed when the tugboat’s engine overheated and it had to return to Lae.<\/p>\n

A larger tugboat from Lae was expected to make further attempts at freeing the Coral Adventurer on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has started a safety investigation into the incident and is gathering evidence, while the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said it had detained the vessel “based on reasonable suspicion” that it was “not seaworthy due to potential damage sustained during the grounding”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Coral Adventurer was carrying 80 tourists into the remote reaches of Papua New Guinea when it came…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,94496,12367,150504,31574,180412,204878,44],"class_list":["post-380554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-maritime-safety-authority","tag-australian-transport-safety-bureau","tag-coral-adventurer","tag-coral-expeditions","tag-lae","tag-mv-ialibu","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380554","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=380554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}