The U.S. Coast Guard says it and its partner agencies rescued four boaters reported overdue on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. They were found aboard a disable 19-foot skiff near the Gulfport ship channel in heavy fog.
"Thanks to the coordination between our units and partner agencies, we were able to locate the four missing boaters and bring them back home to their friends and family," said Ensign Moriya French, a command duty officer at Coast Guard Sector Mobile. "This incident serves as a reminder to the boating public to always have proper VHF-FM radio communication equipment, an EPIRB, SPOT GPS, and other geolocating devices onboard your vessel before going out to sea."
The Coast Guard received the call around 4:30 Tuesday morning from a concerned neighbor that the boat, with two adults and two children aboard, had not returned as expected Monday night.
After confirming the boaters' truck and boat trailer were still at Pass Christian Harbor, watchstanders dispatched a Station Gulfport boatcrew, two Coast Guard Station Pascagoula boatcrews, the crew of the cutter Tiger Shark, and a Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircrew to search.
