FIVE more people were rescued and four bodies were recovered from the tourist yacht wreck in the Red Sea today as search efforts continued.

Seven people remained missing as 33 total survivors have been found a day after Sea Story, a live-aboard used for maritime activities, sent a distress signal near the Egyptian town of Marsa Alam on Monday.

A large wave crashed into the boat, causing it to capsize, according to officials.

According to its website, Sea Story was built to be able to hold 36 passengers.

The boat carried 13 Egyptians, including crew members, and 31 foreign nationals from the United States, Germany, Britain, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland, China, Slovakia, Spain and Ireland.

The news drew focus away from the death of six children and two adults 2,000km away after a small boat carrying migrants sank off the Greek island of Samos on the same day.

Thirty-six survivors were found on a rocky shoreline on Monday evening and three others were rescued earlier, the coastguard said.

It was not known how many people were on board when the ship sunk and whether anyone else was missing.

In a separate incident on a different Greek island, an elderly man died as a group of 27 migrants made landfall in a small boat, the coastguard said.

Nobody was reported missing.

Samos and other islands in the eastern Aegean Sea serve as key transit points for migrants entering the European Union illegally from the nearby Turkish coast.

Migrant crossings have increased in recent months, with Greek officials attributing the rise to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.