Three missing boaters were rescued after floating in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana for more than 28 hours — and while fending off sharks, the Coast Guard said.
The three fishermen set sail from Venice, Louisiana, on the morning of Oct. 8, but never returned home. A family member reported the men as missing around 10 p.m. that night, but no one knew exactly where they had been fishing.
"Our initial search area was about roughly the size of the state of Rhode Island," Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Keefe, Sector New Orleans search and rescue mission coordinator, told TODAY.
The Coast Guard searched for the men for hours by air and sea, but it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that the search had a breakthrough.
One of the missing men was able to get cell phone service and sent a message of their location on Apple Maps.
"They just happened to be floating around and he received text messages, like his cell phone got cell phone service. He told me he had 2% battery," Keefe said. "And he fired off that text message with that screenshot and said something about how his boat sank."
While the screenshot showed their location, it did not contain coordinates. Keefe said the Coast Guard was able to use "geolocation, and orienting ourselves to the map and some of the contours" of the Gulf of Mexico, leading the the command center to identify the location.
Within two hours of the message exchange, the missing boaters were located about 25 miles off the shore of Empire, Louisiana. When the Coast Guard arrived, they saw two of the fishermen clinging to a cooler and fending off sharks.
The two boaters were pulled to safety before any serious injuries could occur, the Coast Guard said.
"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," Lt. Katy Caraway, U.S. Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans co-pilot, told TODAY.
The Coast Guard found the third fisherman nearly half a mile away, and hoisted him from the water into a helicopter.
All three boaters were wearing life jackets, though one was torn by a shark.
"We actually were able to recover one of the life jackets that had been eaten through by a shark," Caraway said.
One of the fishermen was experiencing signs of hypothermia, according to the Coast Guard. All three were taken to an area hospital, where they were listed in stable condition. Their names weren't released.
"It’s difficult for us to describe how lucky they were that all these things happened in their favor and ultimately, we were able to rescue them," Keefe said.
"Having those life jackets on — and actually donning those life jackets — is what saved their lives," Caraway added. "And to be quite honest, the gentleman’s cell phone as well."