Divers searching for survivors inside a stricken cruise ship off the Italian coast have found five more bodies, local media reported on Tuesday.

"Coastguard scuba divers have just found five bodies in the wreck of the Concordia. The bodies were found in the stern," ANSA news agency and other media reported.

The discovery raised the number of fatalities to 11, with another 24 people missing.

Earlier today, Divers used explosives to blow holes in the wreck of the ship to help in the hunt for the missing people, as prosecutors grilled the arrested captain over his role.

A black box transcript showed Francesco Schettino -- who is reported to have sailed so close to the shore to please a local crew member -- ignored a port official's order to return on deck after abandoning the stricken ship.

The huge Costa Concordia cruise liner hit rocks and pitched over off the picturesque Tuscan island of Giglio on Friday  and survivors have recounted scenes of chaos after the disaster struck. 

"It was bravado, Schettino was showing off, clowning around, it was incredibly stupid. I would sentence him not once but 10 times," said a former captain who worked with the ship's owner, Costa Crociere.

"The rock was clearly signed on all the shipping maps," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Schettino, 52, is being interrogated by Italian prosecutors, who have accused him of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship before all the passengers were rescued, although he has not yet been formally charged.

A judge is to rule whether to grant bail for Schettino, who was arrested on Saturday along with the first officer Ciro Ambrosio.

The coast guard said the search operation was continuing four days after the tragedy, but that the chilly winter waters of the Mediterranean made finding survivors unlikely.

As fears rose of an environmental disaster if the ship's fuel tanks rupture and leak, coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini said crews had laid down absorbent booms after noticing "an iridescence" in the waters off Giglio, a marine sanctuary and popular holiday spot. 

The Italian press reported that as the vessel began to pitch over, crew members initiated the evacuation procedure themselves -- 15 minutes before Schettino eventually gave the command, Italian press reported.

A recording of a conversation between Schettino and a port official was aired by Sky Italy television today. Despite all orders to the contrary, the captain refused to return to the ship.

"You must tell us how many people, children, women and passengers are there and the exact number of each category," the official tells Schettino, according to the recording on one of the ship's "black boxes".

"What are you doing? Are you abandoning the rescue?" the official says.

Island residents have already said the ship was sailing far too close to Giglio and had hit a reef known as the School Rocks, well known to inhabitants.

Local officials are calling for strict curbs in the future on shipping routes in an area of outstanding natural beauty and the government is expected to declare a state of emergency there later this week.

Smit, a specalist Dutch salvage company, began assessing the site on Tuesday and plans to begin pumping out the fuel this week, although it said it would take at least three weeks to complete the operation.

"We have around 15 or so divers who will carry out the first inspection dive today. We're still waiting for diving equipment and specialised tools to start transferring the fuel off the ship," Smit supervisor Rene Robben said.

Officials said the giant ship itself could then be taken off Giglio in an unprecedented operation using massive floating devices.

Passengers have described confusion and panic on board as the lights went out and the ship lurched sharply over to its side just as many were sitting down to dinner shortly after the start of the seven-day Mediterranean cruise.

Ennio Aquilino, a fire brigade chief who was one of the first on the scene and still bore the scars from a fall during the rescue operation as he saved a French woman, said it had been "an apocalyptic scene."