U.S. Coast Guard personnel rescued three fishermen, two dealing with shark-caused hand injuries and one with hypothermia symptoms, 25 miles offshore from Louisiana.
The men’s boat had sunk Saturday morning, leaving them to contend with sharks and cold for more than 28 hours, floating in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Coast Guard in New Orleans received word Saturday evening from a boater’s relative that a loved one, along with the two other fishermen with him, had not returned from a fishing trip earlier that day. The call prompted a search spanning 1,250 square miles by air and sea.
A breakthrough occurred Sunday when one of the men, his phone on its last legs, messaged the Coast Guard with an Apple Maps screenshot of their location.
“They just happened to be floating around and he received text messages, like his cellphone got cellphone service. He told me he had 2% battery. And he fired off that text message with that screenshot and said something about how his boat sank,” Coast Guard Sector New Orleans Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Keefe told NBC’s “Today” show.
Within two hours, Coast Guard officers from Corpus Christi, Texas, spotted the three men in the water, wearing life jackets and clinging to coolers.
By the time a boat from the Coast Guard station in Venice, Louisiana, arrived, two of the fishermen had been separated from the third and had sustained injuries from fending off sharks.
The Coast Guard “arrived on scene and witnessed two of the boaters fending off sharks, along with injuries to both boater’s hands. The two boaters were pulled from the water by the boat crew before additional injuries could occur.”
Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans Lt. Katy Carraway described the injuries to the “Today” show, saying “They had multiple lacerations on their hand, almost down to the bone, indicative of a shark bite and serrated edges indicative of a shark’s tooth puncturing their hands.”
The third fisherman, having floated nearly half a mile away from the others, was lifted from the water via aircraft.
At the time of the two rescues, one of the boaters was dealing with signs of hypothermia. The three men were reported as stable after arriving at University Medical Center New Orleans on Sunday.
“We searched an area roughly the size of Rhode Island and are thankful to have found these missing boaters. If the family member had not notified the Coast Guard, and if these three boaters were not wearing life jackets, this could’ve been a completely different outcome,” Lt. Cmdr. Keefe said.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified which map service was used in the rescue. It was an Apple Maps screenshot.
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