Two fishermen who had been stranded for five days without food or water more than 160 miles off the coast of Mexico have been rescued, the Mexican Navy said Wednesday.
Search and rescue operations began on August 14, when the male fishermen’s association made a distress call stating that they had lost contact with the fishermen, aged 53 and 32.
Mexico’s navy searched vast swathes of the Pacific Ocean by sea and air, eventually finding the two men floating in a large fishing cooler about 150 miles off the coast of Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, which borders Guatemala.
Both men were airlifted to the port, treated by doctors, and reunited with their families, the Navy said.
The Mexican Navy has not identified the men and it is unclear how their ship became disabled.
Video shared by the Navy shows the large turquoise box with the two men inside bobbing in the swells of the dark sea as rescuers move out. The ship approaches the cooler and the two are pulled to safety.
“These days we didn’t think we would survive,” one of the fishermen said in a video released by the Mexican Navy. “The only thing we could do was pray to God and wait for the help of all of you here in the Navy.”
Another fisherman said: “It was the hardest thing you can imagine.” “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.” The men said they ate or drank “absolutely nothing” during their five days at sea.
The rescue demonstrated the Navy’s “commitment to the public to protect lives at sea,” the newspaper said.
