About a week ago, I was with my marine biology class going on out field study. During our field study we go to Nacote Creek and take boats out to our destination where we sane or troll for fish and other organisms. This was my first time ever going out on the field study so I was really excited. Just imagine two boats filled with 15 people each all wearing orange life jackets. We were headed to long beach island where we learned to sane for fish. If you don't know what saning is, it’s when three people take a net out into the water and walk it back to shore catching all the fish that were in that area of water. You do this multiple times in different areas. The fish that have been caught get sorted, measured, and released.
I was pretty excited to learn how to sane, since I had never done it before. Long Beach Island is about 45 minutes by boat from Nacote creek. The boat ride was pretty boring that is until we pulled up on some metal thing in the water. The sun was shimmering on it and everyone was wondering what it could be. It wasn't until we were on top of it that we had noticed it was an upside down Jet Ski! Can you imagine what we were thinking! We looked all around to see if there was anyone in the water, but we didn't see anything. We finally saw a boat in the distance and drove over too it. It was there that we saw 2 more jet skies, only one of which had a person on it. We all wondered if they had lost someone in the water.
The captain of out boat asked the man on the Jet Ski if he was looking for someone in the water. The man replied, "No, no! He's really hurt! Do you know where we are?" My first thought was how do you drive out to the middle of the ocean and not know where you are. My second though was where the other two guys that weren’t on jet skis were. Our captain called the coast guard and gave them the coordinates to where we were. Within minutes the state police arrive on boat, and the coast guard arrived. We all still wondered where the other 2 people were, because all we could see was the one man on his jet ski. When our boat drifted to another angle we were able to see what was going on perfectly. The man that had been injured was being held out of the water by the second jet skier. Both were holding on to the third jet skiers jet ski.
The coast guard couldn't lift the man on to the boat, so they put the gurney in the water and lifted him up into the boat that way. Our captain said it was okay for us to leave now that the man was being helped so we left. As we were leaving we saw that the firefighters were coming by boat. I didn't know firefighters had boats, but I was glad to see that this man was getting all the help he needed. We kept our radio on the coast guard station to see if there would be any updates on what had happened. The last thing we heard was that the man had to be air lifted to the hospital. Our captain said the only reasons they would have him air lifted were if he was internally bleeding or injured his spine.
I've been trying to find news articles that are related to this incident to see how the accident occurred and what happened to the man. If there is anything we can learn from this is that jet skis can be dangerous if you are not careful, and that you should always know where you are when you are going out into the open water.
I hope that this man will be alright, and if I find any new information I will be sure to post it.
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