The crew of a commercial fishing boat helped rescue a man who had fallen overboard into a busy Massachusetts harbor and administered CPR before U.S. Coast Guard personnel arrived at the scene, officials confirmed.
In the early morning hours Tuesday, a crew member fell nearly 40 feet off the chemical tanker MTM Dublin into Boston Harbor.
A nearby commercial fishing boat, the America, responded to the tanker ship's mayday call and was the first vessel on the scene.
Crew members used flashlights to search for the missing man in the pitch-black water before spotting and rescuing him.
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Fisherman John Abraham, a friend of the America’s crew, told WFXT Boston 25 News that 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."
A rescue boat crew from USCG Station Boston responded to the scene at 4:30 a.m. The America transferred the man to the rescue boat crew, who brought him to ashore, officials said.
America's captain Bryant Moulton said that finding the crew member in the water was "really lucky."
"We’re really lucky 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," Moulton told the news station.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
