A U.S. Coast Guard Team Fought Off Sharks To Rescue A Group Of Fisherman That Had Spent 24 Hours Submerged In The Gulf of Mexico

A Coast Guard team effort rescued three people from hypothermia, exposure, and sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, Sunday.

Crew from U.S. Coast Guard Station Venice, U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Corpus Christi and U.S. Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans launched in response for a missing mariner case, after a family member called in reporting that her husband and two friends had not returned to shore at their agreed time.

The boaters were found by Air Station Corpus Christi, in the water and fending off sharks.

The Station Venice boat crew recovered two boaters while Air Station New Orleans deployed a rescue swimmer and rescued the third, who had drifted away from the others. All were then airlifted and transferred to University Medical Center New Orleans.

Overall, the boaters spent more than 24 hours in the water after their boat sank at approximately 10 a.m. Saturday morning, stranding them without communication devices. The Coast Guard searched an area spanning 1,250 square miles, slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island, in order to locate the men.

Whew. 

When I lived in California I used to get nervous sitting on my surfboard, because the second I started looking down into the water my mind would wander & go into panic mode thinking about what was down there. "Was that a shadow I just saw? Oh God. This is it." I'd imagine something grabbing my foot & my heart would start pounding. It was my 'Home Alone furnace moment' & it took a lot to reel my mentals back in. 

Just saying all that because I was feeling genuine terror sometimes just 50 feet from shore in the middle of the day surrounded by other people, so I cannot imagine being in the middle of the Gulf in the pitch black of night and feeling sharks nipping at my legs ready to eat me alive. The sheer horror of that, the exhaustion of staying afloat & fighting for your life that long, the agony of hearing your buddies struggling, too... And then how AMAZING it must have been to hear the Coast Guard boats & helicopters approaching. 

We've had Coasties on ZeroBlog30 before to talk about training in massive waves, undertaking rescue missions & what day to day life is like and it's incredible the amount of work they do. 

Just looking back through our own social media we've got countless examples of Coast Guard members putting their lives on the line for people regardless of weather conditions, rescuing animals, hopping on drug subs, & so much more. There's far too many to post but here's a few: 

It's especially crazy looking at the scope of all they do & knowing they're often waaaaay underfunded, and on multiple occasions have gone without their paychecks (whenever the government shuts down the other branches are fine, but because they fall under the Dept Of Homeland Security they get screwed). Regardless they always but their best efforts forward & there's thousands of people out there alive today because of it. Glad these fisherman got to go home to their families.

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