The search for Daniel Küblböck, a German pop star who went missing from a cruise ship on Sunday morning, has been called off. The gay singer was travelling alone on the Canadian AidaLuna as the ship was heading towards St John’s, Newfoundland.

Eye-witnesses report seeing the 33 year-old jump overboard. The ship returned to the location where a search party commenced.

Military aircraft and coast guard vessels conducted the search as police treated the incident as a missing-person case. The search took place within a 200km radius, north of St Johns. Over four ships and two aircraft were involved in the extensive search, which concluded on Monday morning.

In a statement, Canadian Armed Forces announced that they had made the “very difficult decision” to call off the search. This was due to “the short survivability time due to the temperature of the water at this time of year”.

The spokesperson from the Canadian Armed Forces added: “Mr Küblböck’s next of kin are being assisted by the Aida Cruise Lines Company and our thoughts are with them during this very difficult time”.

The ship was travelling from Hamburg in Germany and was due to arrive in New York on the 14th of September.

Küblböck rose to fame when he came third on the first season of the German edition of Pop Idol, “Deutschland such den Superstar” in 2003. He achieved celebrity status in Germany between 2002 and 2004. Küblböck later took part in the sixth season of Big Brother in Germany in 2005, before competing on the eighth season of Germany’s Let’s Dance in 2015.

Küblböck came out as gay in 2010. He had previously identified as bisexual.

Gay Star News reported that Küblböck revealed in a series of Facebook posts that he had been struggling with his mental health. In a post, he wrote: “Dear fans. Unfortunately, I still do not feel better mentally and physically. I have yet to cope with this pain of the past months.”

The police will continue to treat Küblböck’s disappearance as a missing person case.