The search for an Australian man who went overboard from a cruise ship in a remote area of the Pacific has been called off for the day, after a US Coast Guard plane exhausted its fuel supply.
A passenger went overboard from Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas before 11pm Tuesday night, local time, two days before it was due to arrive in Honolulu. The ship left Brisbane on 12 April and was about 900km south of Hawaii at the time of the incident.
The ship launched a search and rescue operation which lasted two hours. The US Coast Guard received the report from Royal Caribbean at 1am Hawaii time, and launched a Hercules aircraft at 7am Wednesday which reached the search area at 9am. The US Coast Guard is preparing to resume the search at first light on Thursday morning local time.
Spokesperson for the 14th district coast guard based in Honolulu, Ryan Fisher, said the Hercules was the only asset on the scene conducting a search.
The plane completed five search patterns, which involved tracking drift patterns in the ocean using locator beacons, but was unable to find the man.
With six hours’ of fuel, the plane ended its search at 3pm local time, Fisher said. Search efforts will resume the next morning.
No other aircraft were available to continue the search, including the US navy, who were contacted, Fisher said. The coast guard issued an urgent call to any ships in the area that might be able to help.
Fisher confirmed the Australian went overboard 500 nautical miles (926km) south of Hawaii’s Big Island.
Georgina Thompson, a passenger on board the Quantum of the Seas, said she and her husband were in bed when they heard “Oscar Oscar Oscar” – Royal Caribbean’s emergency code for man overboard.
Thompson told Nine’s Today Show she and her husband then went out on their deck to see the lights and lifeboats deployed, but at the time didn’t know what was happening.
“The light started searching along the outside of the ship, shining along the outside right down the bottom. We were watching it. It lit up the whole ocean. Well, most of the ocean. But it was very dark.”
“You just knew that something was wrong.”
Thompson said her husband thought the ship had stopped because it hit something, “but then we realised that there was someone overboard.”
The mood at breakfast the next morning she said was “very sombre”.
Two travel bloggers on board the Quantum of the Seas recounted on Instagram that they felt the ship turning around shortly after 11pm and an announcement was made for passengers to return to their cabins and make sure all their party were accounted for.
They said a final announcement was made at 12.30am that the ship would reopen and passengers could leave their cabins.
Gale Doyle, another passenger told ABC news she knew the calls of “Oscar Oscar Oscar” meant a person was overboard because she has been cruising extensively.
“Eventually they started calling a person’s name, it was a male. They called the person’s name several times so we assumed this person is the missing person,” Doyle said.
The passengers had received no news about the man the next morning, she said.
