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 on Saturday, after the Coral Expeditions cruise visited Lizard Island, off the coast of Cooktown, 320 kilometres north of Cairns.<\/p>\n
Her body was found the next day by emergency services.<\/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
<\/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
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
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":104772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,75883,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-104771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-lizard-island","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}