A man was rescued after falling overboard during a holiday cruise in the Gulf of Mexico after several hours in the water near New Orleans, authorities said Friday. He is reportedly in stable condition.
The 28-year-old man, whose identity has not yet been made public, may have been in the water for at least six hours before being rescued from the sea on Thursday. He was found roughly 20 miles south of Louisiana’s Southwest Pass, where the Mississippi River meets the coast, said U.S. Coast Guard officials.
The man’s survival was hailed as a Thanksgiving miracle due to the extended amount of time he was in the water. Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan Graves noted that it is unlikely to survive at sea without a flotation device, which the man did not have.
It still remains unclear how the man fell overboard. The man was on a Carnival Cruise Line ship, and an accidental fall into the water would be rare and even physically challenging to manage, according to a statement from the company.
In a statement to CNN, Carnival officials said that the man was reported missing at noon on Thanksgiving Day. He had disappeared the night before, sometime before 11 p.m., after he walked away from his sister at an onboard bar. He never returned, prompting his sister to alert staff members the next day.
The Coast Guard conducted a 200-plus-mile search and exercised all of its available resources.
“We are beyond grateful that this case ended with a positive outcome,” said Lt. Seth Gross, a Sector New Orleans search and rescue mission coordinator. “It took a total team effort from Coast Guard watchstanders, response crews, and our professional maritime partners operating in the Gulf of Mexico to locate the missing individual and get him to safety. If not for the alert crew aboard the motor vessel Crinis, this case could have had a much more difficult ending.”
