JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A crew credited for rescuing a man from the ocean off the coast of Fort Pierce, where a suspected human smuggling boat capsized in a storm, arrived Wednesday afternoon at JaxPort.
The U.S. Coast Guard said 38 other people are still missing at sea.
The ship — the Signet Intruder — is a commercial tugboat that regularly runs to Puerto Rico and back, but this trip was like no other.
“Crews have been out searching throughout yesterday and throughout the night. We did recover one deceased body,” said Capt. Jo-Ann Burdian, sector Miami commander with the Coast Guard.
Investigators said the boat was carrying 40 people when it capsized.
“We do suspect that this is a case of human smuggling,” Burdian said. “This event occurred in a normal route for human smuggling from the Bahamas into the southeast U.S.”
The seven-person crew was on their way back from a trip to Puerto Rico when they spotted something floating on the water about 40 miles off the coast of Port St. Lucie. The man was clinging to a the capsized boat.
“They rendered aid, and within about 15 to 20 minutes, he started regaining his strength and started indulging on the gravity of the situation,” said Joshua Nelson, operations manager with Signet Maritime Corporation.
The crew might not have been there to help had they taken their normal route. They adjusted it to avoid an incoming vessel.
“Had that vessel not been coming inbound around the same time, we would have never come across him,” Nelson said. “We would have easily been three to four miles away from him.”
The man — whose identity has not been released — told officials he left Bimini with 39 others on Saturday night. He said their boat capsized after getting caught in severe weather — adding that no one board was wearing a life jacket.
“Without life jackets, anyone is disadvantaged to survive in the water,” Burdian said. “Life jackets save lives, no matter the circumstance.”
The Coast Guard says its crews have been searching some 7,500 square miles of water. That’s roughly the same size as the state of New Jersey.
It was during that search that crews recovered the first body — bringing the total number of missing to 38.
They say the lone survivor was transferred to a medical facility on shore and is now in stable condition and being interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security.
While the Coast Guard remains committed to finding any survivors, it realizes time is not on its side.
“It is dire,” Burdian said. “The longer they remain in the water without food, without water, exposed to the marine environment, the sun, the sea conditions, it is — every moment that passes, it becomes much more dire and unlikely that anyone could survive in those conditions.”