BOSTON — The crew of a commercial fishing boat recovered an unresponsive man who had fallen overboard from a tanker ship and began CPR before the Coast Guard rushed him to shore for medical care, officials said.
The U.S. Coast Guard in Boston responded to a call at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday that a crew member fell off the MTM Dublin who issued a mayday.
The search took place in pitch-dark conditions and rough seas near Boston Harbor, and the America found the crew member after being the first vessel on the scene, said Petty Officer Lyric Jackson, a Coast Guard spokesperson.
“We’re really luck that he was found. I don’t know why we did, but we did. We just happened to see his orange vest in the water,” America’s captain Bryant Moulton said.
Fisherman John Abraham, a friend of the America’s crew, said finding the man with flashlights, was like finding a needle in a haystack.
“That’s all they had,” Abraham said. “Some of (the boats) have big spotlights but they didn’t have spotlights,” Abraham said.
The man was unresponsive when he was pulled from the water and crews performed CPR on the man as they were rushing him back to the harbor, where he was transported to a local Boston hospital, a Boston EMS spokesperson says.
“They did CPR all the way to the dock. And that was like a 45-minute, hour ride or more. They never stopped, never stopped,” Moulton said.
There is no details on how the fisherman fell overboard, but crew members tell Boston 25 that it’s close to a 40-foot drop into the water.
The MTM Dublin is a chemical tanker, according to marinetraffic.com.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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