'No-one Even Knew They Were Gone or Missing'

A lucky couple were fished out of the sea after having spent three days attempting to stay above water.

Lorne Benussi, from Yeppoon in Australia, found the couple after hearing shouts for help when he was anchoring his fishing vessel for the night near a sandbar on Camp Island, just off the Queensland coast, on January 7.

"We turned all the lights on and saw a young couple floating past in the tide... they were only treading water. They had no board or anything," Benussi told ABC News Australia.

Despite a brutal storm, Benussi went out in a dinghy to rescue them.

"When we picked them off, it was blowing probably 20 to 25 knots, pouring rain, and then the bar is very shallow coming out of Yellow Patch," he said.

"We just got [them] in the dinghy and dragged them over the side... they just collapsed in the dinghy."

The couple had originally been at North West Island, an idyllic, off-grid site around 35 miles across the ocean to the east of where Benussi found them.

They told him they had been dropped off at the island for a camping trip on January 7. The pair had gone for a paddleboard trip but had found themselves swept away from the island by the tide, leaving them in the open ocean. At some point, they had lost the paddleboards too, and were left to tread water until their rescue on the night of January 10.

"They were just drifting around the ocean for a few days," he said. "No-one even knew they were gone or missing, because they weren't due to be picked up until the following Tuesday."

Luckily, they were swept back towards the Australian mainland rather than further out into the Pacific Ocean.

"A bit of north-easterly wind and the stronger currents... pulled them back towards Cape Capricorn, which is very lucky for them," Benussi said.

It is unknown how long the couple were without their paddleboards, but treading water for extended periods of time can be incredibly tiring, with most people not being able to last for more than a few hours. Additionally, the couple would have been losing heat to the ocean water, putting them at risk of hypothermia, as well as losing water from sweat, increasing their dehydration.

"People can survive several days (at least 3) without water and there are some extraordinary stories of survival for very long periods," Simon Mitchell, a consultant anesthesiologist and diving physician at the University of Auckland, told Newsweek.

Benussi gave the couple water and food once they were aboard his vessel, as well as hot showers and clean clothes.

"They were just drinking gallons of water," he said. "They were so thirsty, they could not stop drinking water all night."

Due to the heavy rain, strong winds and a lack of phone reception, Benussi waited until the morning to take them back to shore.

"We didn't want to risk trying to cross the bar in the middle of the night and running aground ourselves," he said.

The next morning, on Tuesday, the couple were met by emergency services at Keppel Bay Marina in Yeppoon, and were taken to Capricorn Coast Hospital. As of Wednesday, they were still in hospital, but in a stable condition.

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