Mike Corey

I imagine in this scenario, with the vertical movement of the waves and the horizontal pushing of the ocean, that must have been quite the struggle to be able to get over them directly.

And these fishermen in the water, how long had they been there at this point?

So it was it was hours.

And that's pushing the edge of what humans are able to do in water that is so close to freezing.

It was a 38 Fahrenheit or something like that.

So these men you knew were going to be in dire shape if you could get a hold of one of them.

When you finally got a hold of one of the fishermen and brought him up in the basket, how did it feel to have one man in the chopper after such incredible difficulty?

You're flying the helicopter in this terrible storm.

You're hovering over the stranded fishermen.

You've already managed to rescue one of them, and you're sending this basket back down a second time.

But this time, things didn't go as well as the first.

Tell us a bit about that.

And I knew he was dead and I had just lost him.

And I imagine that, yeah, changed the attitude of the rescue from success having one and two people, but then having one, unfortunately, fall.

Yeah.

Your co-pilot, Ted Lefevre, bought everyone some more time on scene by arranging a return to a closer base in Yakutat.

And this allowed you more time to work on the third fisherman.

What decisions did you have to make at that moment?

And Mike Fish, the rescue swimmer, wanted to go in to try and save Mark Morley, who was the one who fell from the basket.

We...