Search underway for young couple missing from Carnival ship (VIDEO)
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — In this handout image provided by Carnival Australia, P&O Cruises’s Pacific Sun joins Sydney’s Australia Day celebrations with the cruise ship ‘dressed’ with two of the biggest Australian flags ever displayed on the harbour, each measuring 44 metres by 22 metres, as she moored in the harbour during the early morning on January 26, 2012 in Sydney, Australia. Pacific Sun’s Australia Day role in the celebrations comes as the countdown begins for the ‘Sydney Festival of Cruising’ throughout February, a record month for cruise ships in Sydney for the summer cruise season.
A massive search has been launched off the coast of Australia's state of New South Wales for a young couple, who were captured on security cameras apparently leaping off the side of the Carnival Spirit cruise ship late Wednesday night.
Their absence was only noticed early Thursday, when the ship docked at the port in Sydney. The couple appear to have been traveling with family and friends when they disappeared, and the incident isn't being treated as suspicious, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
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"We are pulling out all stops to try and find the pair," said Police Marine Area Commander Mark Hutchings of the search to the Sydney Morning Herald.
"We believe they were up mid-deck, which is half way up the side of the ship which is quite away to fall. At the moment I've said to my staff it's game on and we are going to be pulling out all stops to try to find these people at the moment."
Hutchings hadn't ruled out a suicide pact, wrote The Australian, which noted the couple would have been in the water for thirteen hours at the time of his address to media this evening.
The couple are a 30-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman, whose identities have not yet been released to the public. They were two of 2,680 passengers on the mega cruise ship, according to ABC.
It's been a rough year for the Carnival line of ships, beginning with a widely-publicized February power failure that resulted in a slow and squalid limp back to shore for the Triumph vessel, while both the Carnival Legend and Dream suffered from power issues in March.