After hundreds of rescue workers fanned out across a massive swath of the Atlantic for a full week, the US Coast Guard’s search for two teenage fishermen was to end on Friday, a heartrending decision for families so convinced the boys could be alive they are pressing on with their own search.
Even as officials announced at noon that the formal search-and-rescue effort would end at sundown, private airplanes and boats were preparing to keep scouring the water hoping to find clues on what happened to the 14-year-old neighbors, Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos.
Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor called the decision to suspend the search “excruciating and gut-wrenching.” He suggested what long had been feared by observers — that the boys had surpassed any reasonable period of survivability — with his offering of “heartfelt condolences.”
“I know no statistics will ease the pain,” he said in recounting the seven-day, nearly 50,000-square-nautical-mile (129,500km2) search. “We were desperate to find Austin and Perry.”
With volunteers ready to keep searching all along the coastline and about US$340,000 in search-fund donations by Friday evening, the families promised to keep looking for their sons.
Nick Korniloff, Perry’s stepfather, addressed a horde of media outside his home on a quiet street in Florida, saying air searches led by private pilots would go on alongside new efforts led by former members of the military and others with special training.
“We know there’s a window here and we think there’s an opportunity,” he said, “and we will do everything we can to bring these boys home.”
Those who have met with the families believe the private search could go on at least for weeks.
The coast guard had dispatched crews night and day to scan the Atlantic for signs of the boys. They chased repeated reports of objects sighted in the water and at times had the help of the US Navy and other local agencies. However, after the boys’ boat was found overturned on Sunday last week, no useful clues turned up.
The families had held out hope that items believed to have been on the boat, including a large cooler, might be spotted or that the teens might even have clung to something buoyant in their struggle to stay alive. Even as hope dimmed, experts on survival said finding the teens alive was still possible. The coast guard said it would keep on searching until officials no longer thought the boys could be rescued.
The boys grew up on the water, constantly boated and fished, worked at a tackle shop together and immersed themselves in life on the ocean. Their families said they could swim before they could walk. They clung to faith in their boys’ knowledge of the sea, even speculating they might have fashioned a raft and spear to keep them afloat and fed while adrift.
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