Two People Missing After Falling Overboard From Carnival Cruise Ship

The cursed year for cruise ships continues: early Thursday morning, authorities aboard the Carnival Spirit in Australia realized two passengers had fallen overboard. Over one day later, neither has been found.

Paul Rossington and Kristen Schroder, a couple traveling with seven of their family members and friends, went missing roughly 65 miles from shore, just hours before the ship docked in Sydney, Australia at the end of its 10-day trip.

Surveillance camera footage from Wednesday night shows the couple falling from the ship's mid-deck, according to New South Wales Police Superintendent Mark Hutchings. Investigators are still analyzing surveillance footage to see if the couple fell or if they jumped. Hutchings said no life preservers were missing from the ship, but a major rescue effort was put into place; an airplane, a helicopter, and several police boats are searching the roughly 1,000 square mile area where the couple went missing.

"We're going to be going hard today — we've got a lot of assets we're throwing at this," Hutchings told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

The tragedy is the just latest in a long string of recent public relations disasters for cruise ship companies. Ten weeks ago, a Carnival Cruise ship lost power and quickly became a shit-encrusted hell-boat. Two weeks later, a gastrointestinal virus overtook a Royal Caribbean cruise. Not long after that, another Carinval ship had some bathroom problems of its own. And over a year ago, a Costa Concordia ship capsized off the coast of Italy, killing 32.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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