A US Coast Guard helicopter rescued a man who had fallen overboard from a Carnival cruise ship off the coast of New Orleans on November 24.
The man survived up to 22 hours treading water in the Gulf of Mexico and was responsive when rescued, according to USCG. The agency’s 8th District reported that the man was in stable condition.
The man was last seen aboard the Carnival Valor at 11 p.m. local time on November 23, when he left his sister at the ship’s bar to go to the restroom.
The following day the sister reported him missing, since he had not returned to his stateroom. Immediately, announcements for the missing passenger rang out across the ship, and staff searched the vessel for him, before the ship reported the missing passenger to the US Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard then deployed “several rescue crews,” and Carnival said that the cruise ship “Valor” “retraced its route to support the search and rescue.”
Meanwhile, a bulker was scanning the sea and spotted somebody drifting in the waters about 20 miles south of Southwest Pass, Louisiana, the CNN reported.
Finally, about 22 hours after the man was last seen, he was lifted from the sea, with Lieutenant Seth Gross, a Coast Guard search-and-rescue coordinator, informing that the man “was showing signs of hypothermia, shock, dehydration.”
