The bodies of those found in the search for six people missing after the sinking of a luxury yacht during a storm off the coast of Sicily are being recovered from the wreckage.

Five bodies have now been brought to shore in the small fishing village of Porticello, around 11 miles from the Sicilian capital of Palermo.

On Thursday, the Italian Coastguard confirmed to the PA news agency that the sixth and final person yet to be found is a woman.

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The timing of Mike Lynch’s death has been likened to a Shakespearean tragedy by his friend.

Brent Hoberman, the lastminute.com founder and friend of Mr Lynch, told BBC: “It’s very tragic and the timing is of a Shakespearean era tragedy.”

Mr Hoberman added: “He had just worked hard to clear his name for the last 12 years and was on a celebratory cruise with the people who supported him so much through that really tough time.”

Mike Lynch’s Autonomy co-founder David Tabizel has paid tribute to him, saying “the world has lost a genius”.

In a post on social media site X, he said: “It looks like we’ve lost our dear Dr Mike Lynch. RIP. The world has lost a genius. His family have lost a giant of a man.”

Remotely controlled underwater vehicles and cave divers are looking to raise the yacht, which experts will examine in the coming days. For now, the focus is on finding the final sixth passenger since the yacht went down in the early hours of Monday 19 August.

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The former cabinet minister Lord Deben told Times Radio on Wednesday that his friend Mike Lynch was at the “beginning of a new life” after being acquitted in a major fraud trial.

“He came back to be ready to start again. He made such a contribution to Britain. His companies have put British IT in the forefront, and he was going to do it again, and we pray that he can do it again,” the former Conservative MP said.

Paying tribute to his family, he added: “The daughters did so much for him, and yet, at the same time, achieved so much in their own work. The younger one [Hannah] getting into Oxford; the older one completing studies with very considerable aplomb.

“All that going on while still being there for him and supporting him and understanding that they could give to him what no one else could. So for that family to be torn apart in this way is really terribly sad.”

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Social media users posted video of waterspouts off the coast of Italy on the same day the Bayesian sank, and in the days before the tragic incident. Video posted online on Monday also showed the superyacht being engulfed in storm conditions.

“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), which is almost 3 degrees more than normal. This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms,” climatologist Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian meteorological society, said.

“So we can’t say that this is all due to climate change, but we can say that it has an amplifying effect,” he added.

Mercalli said that a waterspout or a downburst, a more frequent phenomenon that doesn’t involve the rotation of the air, could have been the cause of the sunken yacht.

A waterspout is a column of air and water mist, and there are two types – tornadic and fair weather. Tornadic waterspounds have the ability to form over water, or start on land and then move over water. They have the same qualities as a land tornado — also taking a ropelike structure — and can be just as destructive.

Emergency workers are unable to predict if and when the sixth person, believed to be Mike Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, would be discovered.

Luca Cari, spokesperson for the fire rescue service, told Sky News: “We would need a crystal ball to know when we’ll be able to find the next body.

“It’s very difficult to move inside the wreckage. Moving just one metre can take up to 24 hours.”

A maritime investigator has said that obtaining witness testimony as quickly as possible will be key for the authorities.

James Wilkes said investigators will want to speak to those who survived or saw the sinking “while the memories are fresh in their mind”.

“A lot of the other information can be collected a bit more slowly,” he told Sky News.

“Fortunately, 15 people survived. I’d like to explore the circumstances in which they were able to survive the storm and the sinking, to look at the anomalies and and work out the difference between those and the people that sadly didn’t survive and combine it all with technical data and simulation,” he said.

The Italian fire service has shared an update on social media after the fifth body was recovered from the Bayesian and brought ashore.

Posting on X, Vigili del Fuoco shared a picture of their equipment alongside the caption: “The dives in the sea began in the early hours of the morning and continue for the search and recovery of the last missing person.”

“The body of the fifth victim was recovered and brought ashore by the divers,” they added.