“I stung him in the eye”: fishermen fought off sharks after their boat sank | American News


Two fishermen battled sharks after their boat sank off the coast of Louisiana while a third swam in for help.

The swimmer, Phong Le, managed to find a phone signal and sent a Google map of his location just before his battery ran out, he told ABC News.

The trio were stranded at sea for 28 hours in shark-infested waters before being rescued.

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Fishing boat crew rescued after shark attack

Luan Nguyen said he and his friends had been in the water since around 10 a.m. Saturday and the predators appeared on Sunday morning. He said a little the front of his life jacket.

“I punched him in the face. And I think that’s where I got…those hand wounds. I took both of my thumbs and punched him in the eyes, and he left,” he said.

The third man has been identified as Son Nguyen.

When the group’s 24-foot-long (7.3-meter) boat sank, they were left without a radio in an area with no telephone service.

“We made a distress call on the VHF radio to the Coast Guard and let them know we had taken on water,” Mr Le told ABC. “And not even a few seconds later, the boat was almost halfway in the water.”

They tied two coolers together like a makeshift float and one held water and fruit, Mr Nguyen said.

Mr Le said he swam for help on Sunday and after swimming for what felt like miles he found a signal on his phone and sent his location on Google Maps to a friend.

“I see him trying to answer me. And the phone cut out – I ran out of battery,” Mr Le said.

A fisherman’s wife reported them missing around 10 p.m. Saturday, said Lieutenant Commander Kevin Keefe, disaster relief coordinator for the New Orleans sector.

One of the boater's life jackets is torn following a shark attack.  Photo: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook
Image:
One of the men’s life jackets was torn in a shark attack. Photo: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook

The woman did not know the launch point and he said it took about 3.5 hours to find their vehicle in Venice, near the southeastern tip of Louisiana, so crews knew the best areas to search at dawn.

Coast Guard boats, planes and a helicopter had spent fruitless hours searching an area larger than Rhode Island before the Google Maps screenshot arrived.

Using the coastal contours, the command center was able to determine where it was, Mr Keefe said.

The two injured men were hoisted aboard a helicopter.  Photo: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook
Image:
The two men were hoisted into a helicopter. Photo: US Coast Guard Heartland/Facebook

The Coast Guard said the pair were found about 25 miles off Empire, a small community along the last narrow strip of the Mississippi Delta southeast of New Orleans.

Mr. Le was rescued first.

Even as the other two men were pulled from the water and transported to a helicopter, they were surrounded and harassed by four blacktip sharks measuring approximately 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 m) long, said Andrew Stone, who was in the Coast Guard boat. crew who rescued the exhausted pair.

“They were too tired to even panic,” he said.

The three fishermen returned home on Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.

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