Three friends from Louisiana survived nearly 28 hours adrift in the Gulf of Mexico after their fishing boat capsized, facing severe dehydration, jellyfish stings, and a terrifying shark attack before their rescue.
Sonny Nguyen, Lu Nguyen, and Paul Le had set out on a Saturday morning in October 2022 with plans to catch red snapper. However, the weather deteriorated rapidly, and their boat capsized about 12 miles offshore. The men were able to grab life jackets, two coolers, and cell phones, but the phones had no signal.
Lu Nguyen, unable to secure a child-sized life jacket properly, wore it backward to keep it from floating away. After 24 hours treading water, using the coolers for flotation, they suffered from sun exposure and dehydration. Sonny Nguyen experienced a heart attack. Paul Le, believing he could swim to a distant shrimp boat for help, struck out on his own but did not return. Sonny and Lu then attempted to swim towards an oil rig miles away, but ocean currents pushed them off course.
Their ordeal worsened when sharks began circling. Lu Nguyen was attacked by a 10-foot tiger shark. The shark bit down on his life jacket, narrowly missing his neck and yanking him away from the coolers. In a desperate act of self-defense, Lu punched the shark's snout and then gouged its eye with his thumb and forefinger, causing the shark to release him and swim away. Sonny Nguyen observed the chaos and saw other sharks circling below the surface.
Despite their injuries, including lacerations on Lu's hand from the shark encounter, Sonny instructed him to keep his injured hand inside a cooler to prevent attracting more sharks. The U.S. Coast Guard, aware the men were missing, launched a search operation covering an area the size of Rhode Island. Despite low odds of survival, rescuers located all three men after 28 hours. A rescue swimmer noted sharks circling the survivors just beneath the water's surface.
The story of their survival is detailed in the book "In Deep Water: A True Story of Sharks, Survival, and Courage" by Michael J. Tougias.