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A pair of scuba divers were rescued by the United States Coast Guard after spending 40 hours floating in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said the divers, identified by KOCO as Nathan and Kim Maker, were reported missing last week after diving near the town of Matagorda, Texas.
"A huge swell comes in and engulfs Kim and Nathan totally. When the swell rolls out, they're nowhere to be found," Charles Owen, a relative of the divers, told the news station.
When Nathan and Kim didn't surface, the other divers on the boat began frantically searching for them even as the weather conditions deteriorated.
"The rain was so hard that you couldn't see outside," Lisa Shearin, who was on the boat with the couple, said. "It stormed and the winds were atrocious, the waves were atrocious."
Eventually, they gave up the search as the Coast Guard took over.
An MH-65 Dolphin Helicopter, an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft, and a Station Port O'Connor Response Boat-Medium were dispatched from Air Station Corpus Christi to search for the pair.
The crews scoured over 1,600 square miles of water for 36 hours before one of the aircraft spotted a flashing light in the water. They provided the coordinates to the response boat, which found the Makers floating about 15 miles off the shore.
They were pulled from the water and taken to Coast Guard Station Freeport in stable condition.
"It was God performing a miracle using the Coast Guard's eyes and ears and their technology, and that's what saved them at the last minute," Owen said.