A North Carolina-based Coast Guard flight crew was searching for a man who fell from a 541-foot-tall refrigerated cargo ship into the cold Atlantic on Saturday morning.
The crew from Coast Guard Station Elizabeth City is flying in a C-130 Hercules military plane, according to a Coast Guard news release.
The man toppled from the Baltic Klipper cargo ship at about midnight, 1,200 miles northeast of Bermuda, according to the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard also alerted any nearby ships to look for the man.
The sea temperature off Wilmington was 55 degrees on Saturday, according to SeaTemperature.info.
In water between 50 degrees and 60 degrees, exhaustion or unconsciousness can set in within an hour or two, and a person can survive only for up to about 6 hours, according to the cold water survival page of the U.S. Search and Rescue Task Force.
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