Two fishermen rescued a man believed to have fallen overboard from Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas after he spent about nine hours in the Pacific Ocean off California.
Grant Garrett and Sean Norton told local station KCBS/KCAL they were roughly 20 miles offshore Friday morning when they spotted someone in the water. They pulled in their fishing lines, then each took an arm and lifted him aboard.
“He was in total shock,” Norton said. The man told them: “Thank you. I thought I was gonna die.”
The rescued man later said he was a pianist on the cruise ship. Newport County officials believe he went overboard around nine hours before the fishermen found him.
He is expected to survive. Norton said unusually warm water, which he attributed to El Niño, may have helped: the Pacific was about 76 degrees, he said, adding that the man might not have survived in cooler conditions.
Royal Caribbean said it was supporting its crew member and had no further details to share out of respect for his privacy.
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