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Search dogs have been sent to Georgia to help search for two Tequesta teenage boys who went missing at sea July 24.
Search crews are trying to determine whether two life jackets that were found off the coast of Savannah are connected to missing boaters Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen, the director of DEEMI Search and Rescue said Tuesday.
The dogs will sniff the life jackets, found on a sandbar about 20 miles offshore Monday night, for any scent of the boys, said Richard Bowie, DEEMI’s director. They also will help crews scour the coastline near where the life jackets were found.
Private organizations such as DEEMI have continued with search efforts since the Coast Guard suspended its search at sunset Friday. The Coast Guard covered nearly 50,000 square nautical miles — spanning from Jupiter to the coast of North Carolina — of ocean during its eight-day search for the 14-year-olds.
The boys’ families have continued the private search with fundraising dollars, with part of the money coming from local events, including one that filled the streets of Abacoa on July 29. A GoFundMe webpage devoted to the search had raised nearly $475,000 as of Tuesday night.
Austin and Perry went missing after setting out from the Jupiter Inlet on a fishing trip. The ocean waters off the inlet grew stormy that afternoon. Crews found their overturned 19-foot, single-engine boat two days later, about 65 nautical miles off the Ponce Inlet in Volusia County.
In recent days, DEEMI, a Maine-based nonprofit, has coordinated air searches and collected high resolution photographs while searching for any sign of the missing teens. The actor John Travolta donated a twin-engine Eclipse jet that was used in the search effort, Bowie said. DEEMI arranged for the dogs to be taken to Savannah to help in the search.
Thousand of photographs have been analyzed as the crew try to find any items that could be linked to the boys’ boat.
“We’re looking for anything that was listed as coming out of the boat,” Bowie said. This weekend, a cooler was recovered off the coast of Wrightsville Beach, N.C., about 300 miles northeast of Savannah, but it turned out it was not connected to the missing teens, he said.
On Tuesday night, candlelight vigils for the boys continued along the Southeast coast. Vigils were planned as far north as Virginia Beach and in the Bahamas, while local vigils included gatherings in Jupiter, Lake Worth, Boynton Beach and Delray Beach.
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