Police probe after body found in water near shipping lanes off Isle of Wight coast

Police have launched an investigation after a body was found close to the main shipping lanes 10 miles south of the Isle of Wight.

The crew of the Brittany Ferries ship Cotentin spotted the body in the water as they made the cross-channel journey and immediately alerted a coastguard helicopter and Isle of Wight lifeboat.

The floating body was later spotted by the helicopter crew and the RNLI volunteers hauled the person aboard before returning to the lifeboat station at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight.

No details of the sex of the person, how long they had been in the sea or where they came from have yet been released by Hampshire Constabulary.

The body was taken from the lifeboat station to the mortuary at St Mary's Hospital in Newport, where a post mortem examination will be carried out.

It was unclear whether the body might be one of the three crew members who drowned when their fishing trawler was struck by a ferry from Portsmouth, off the coast of Jersey before Christmas or whether it could be one of the migrants who drowned in the Channel trying to make the crossing from France to the UK.

A spokesman for Hampshire Constabulary said: "Officers are working to ascertain the identity of the person and how they came to be in the water.

"The death is being treated as unexplained at this time."