Three fishermen survived a deadly shark attack after they became stranded for more than a day when their boat sank in Louisiana.
Phong Le, Son Nguyen and Luan Nguyen were out on a normal fishing trip on Saturday, before they realised they had set their anchor higher than usual and about 25 miles from shore the engine began having problems.
Their ship sank in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico near south-east Louisiana and soon Nguyen found himself having to fight off a shark before the US Coast Guard finally rescued them after more than a day.
“The head part was in front of me, and the shark from just out of nowhere bit the vest.
"So, I pushed the shark and then I tried to push his nose. That didn’t do anything. So, I stuck both of my thumbs and jabbed him in the eyes, and it took off", 46-year-old Nguyen told New Orleans news station WWL-TV.
The trio tied two ice chests together from the boat to create a makeshift float as the boat sank, but this pushed them out further into the open water.
"That was critical in us surviving, tying the ice chests together," Luan Nguyen said.
He continued: "It happened to be that one of the ice chests actually had water and fruit in there."
But eventually, the chest sank too leaving them out in the open floating in bright orange life vests.
Le said he swam for over 5 miles to find help as they could not use any devices aboard to call for help because they lacked appropriate emergency communication devices.
When Le swam for help he ended up finding mobile phone reception and used his remaining 2 per cent battery to send his location to his friend.
They then notified the Coast Guard agency that something was wrong.
The Coast Guard boat and helicopter crews searched an area about the same size as Rhode Island and finally spotted Nguyen roughly 28 hours after the boat sank.
The Coast Guard said the men were found about 25 miles off Empire, a small community located along the last narrow strip of the Mississippi Delta, southeast of New Orleans.
They then located the entire group who was flown to a hospital in New Orleans. Two received treatment for relatively minor hand wounds and all of them were hypothermic from spending time in the Gulf of Mexico in October.
The Coast Guard boat crew said as they were rescuing the trio, they were still being circled and harassed by four blacktip sharks measuring about 4 to 6 feet long each.
Helicopter rescue swimmer Richard Hoefle said one fisherman was missing the tip of a middle finger.
