Navy rescues two fishermen adrift on cooler 150 miles off Chiapas

The Mexican navy rescued two fishermen found alive on a blue cooler about 240 kilometers off the coast of Chiapas on Wednesday, August 19, five days after they lost radio contact with their fishing cooperative in the Pacific Ocean.

The two men, aged 53 and 32, had set out from the community of Paredón, in the municipality of Tonalá, on Thursday, August 13, aboard a shrimp boat that Chiapas outlets identified as the Inmensa. Their families and cooperative last heard from them the following day, when the boat was roughly 120 kilometers from shore, and lost contact after that.

When the men could not be reached, staff at the fishing cooperative placed a distress call asking for help finding them. The Secretariat of the Navy, known by its Spanish acronym SEMAR, acts in a coast guard role. It responded to the call by sending surface vessels and aircraft into the search.

Five days at sea

Rescuers found the pair alive, sitting on the floating cooler far from land in the open Pacific off Mexico's southern coast, about 150 miles out. The men had no working boat and had been adrift for five days when a navy crew reached them on Wednesday afternoon.

Two fishermen who remained five days adrift on a cooler were located and rescued by naval personnel more than 240 km from the coast of Chiapas.

An ocean patrol vessel approached the spot where the two men remained on the cooler and carried out the maneuvers needed to bring them aboard, SEMAR said. The rescue took place roughly 130 nautical miles from the Chiapas coastline, in the Pacific waters that the navy patrols off Mexico's far south.

Naval health personnel gave the men an initial medical check at sea. A helicopter then flew the pair to shore, where they received further care at a naval base before being handed over to their relatives.

How the search worked

SEMAR said it ran the operation under a strategy it calls the Trinomio, which pairs a ship and a fast interceptor craft with an aircraft to cover a wider stretch of ocean than a single vessel could. That combination expanded the area searchers were able to cover and was what let them find the men so far offshore.

The rescue was carried out by the 22nd Naval Zone, which is headquartered at the Port of Chiapas, near Mexico's border with Guatemala. SEMAR posted the announcement to its official account on Wednesday, along with photographs and video of the two men on the blue cooler while still at sea.

The search also drew in state and federal authorities, with crews working from the air and at sea, backed by teams on land.

When the men last made contact on August 14, they were about 120 kilometers from the coast, according to accounts from their families. By the time searchers found them, they had drifted to roughly twice that distance from land.

How the boat came to be lost, and how the two men ended up on the cooler, has not been explained. SEMAR gave no account of what happened to the vessel. The boat was no longer with the men when the navy found them on the water.

The navy did not say when it expected to determine what had gone wrong on the fishing trip.

Who the men are

Mexican news outlets identified the two men as Daniel Guerrero Martínez and José Luis Portelas Villegas, both from Chiapas. The navy did not name the two men in its own announcement, referring to them only by their ages, 53 and 32.

They had left Bahía de Paredón, in the municipality of Tonalá, for a fishing expedition in the Pacific, one Mexican outlet reported. Counting the day they first put out from shore, the men spent close to six days at sea in all before a navy crew pulled them from the water on Wednesday afternoon. The navy's own figure is five days adrift, measured from the last radio contact on August 14.

Once ashore, the men were reunited with their families, according to the navy and Mexican news reports. One photograph released by SEMAR showed a fisherman being carried on a stretcher after the airlift, and others showed the pair still aboard the cooler at sea.

SEMAR sources said the men were found in good condition. The navy did not describe their injuries; El Heraldo de Mexico and Tribuna de la Bahia reported that both were severely dehydrated after five days in open water.

A coast guard operation

The Mexican navy carries out coast guard duties along the country's coasts, and it was in that capacity that its forces conducted the search and rescue. The Pacific waters off Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state on the border with Guatemala, fall under the 22nd Naval Zone at the Port of Chiapas.

Found far from shore

The two fishermen were recovered more than 240 kilometers out in the Pacific, well beyond the point where they had last had radio contact with land. A navy patrol vessel took them aboard on Wednesday afternoon after crews located the cooler drifting on the water, and the navy confirmed the rescue the same day.

Footage distributed by the navy showed the cooler rising and falling on the waves as a patrol boat drew alongside. Still images showed the two men crowded onto the container, which had kept them above the surface through the days adrift.

How the days unfolded

The men set out on August 13 and were last heard from on August 14. The cooperative reported them missing when they failed to return, and the navy's search continued until the pair were spotted on the afternoon of August 19.

The reports did not say whether the men had food or water with them during those days.

After the assessment at sea, the men were flown to a naval base and examined again by medical staff before being released to relatives. SEMAR gave no update on their condition once they had left the base and returned to their families.

SEMAR, headed by Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, said both men were taken from the water alive. Mexican news outlets described the survival of two fishermen on a cooler for the better part of a week in the open Pacific as extraordinary.

What remains unclear

The central questions about the ordeal remain open. SEMAR has not said what disabled the boat, and it has not explained how the two men survived on the cooler until the navy reached them on Wednesday.

The navy's account ends with the two men back on land and in the care of their families, and it did not say whether any investigation into the loss of their boat would follow.