List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

Throughout history, people have mysteriously disappeared at sea. The following is a list of known individuals who have mysteriously vanished in open waters, and whose whereabouts remain unknown. In most ocean deaths, bodies are never recovered, but this fact alone does not make their disappearance mysterious. For example, the victims of the RMS Titanic disaster are not considered to have disappeared mysteriously at sea.

Solved cases

Below is a list of people who were found, dead or alive, or their fate became known, after disappearing mysteriously at sea.

1970–2009

Date	Person	Age	Missing from	Circumstances
4 June 1989	Rose-Noëlle crew	various	Pacific Ocean	The trimaran, which was occupied by four New Zealand nationals, capsized off the coast of New Zealand and leaving the men drifting on the wreckage for 119 days before they managed to reach land.
30 June 2005	Patrick McDermott	48	Off the coast of Los Angeles, California, U.S.	McDermott was the boyfriend of singer Olivia Newton-John; he disappeared after going on an overnight fishing trip. The United States Coast Guard concluded he was likely lost at sea. He was the subject of unsubstantiated claims to have faked his own death.
20 April 2008	Adelir Antônio de Carli	41	Off the coast of Brazil	Adelir Antônio de Carli, also known in Brazil as Padre Baloeiro or Padre do Balão, was a Brazilian Catholic priest, who died during an attempt at cluster ballooning on April 20, 2008. On July 4, 2008, remains later identified as Carli's were found in the ocean from Macaé.
September 2008	CIA operatives	various	South China Sea	Four Central Intelligence Agency operatives during a covert mission in the South China Sea off the coast of the Philippines
4 January 2009	Sonny Fai	20	Te Henga / Bethells Beach, New Zealand	Professional rugby player for the New Zealand Warriors who disappeared while trying to save his brother and four cousins from a rip current. While his body was never found, he was declared drowned a few months later.
26 January 2009	Bob Chappell	65	Hobart, Tasmania, Australia	Chappell was a radiation oncology medical physicist who was killed by his partner aboard a yacht named Four Winds. Though Chappell's body has never been found, his partner, Susan Neill-Fraser, was convicted of the crime.
28 February 2009	Marquis Cooper, Corey Smith, and William Bleakley	Various	Off the coast of Clearwater, Florida, U.S.	Boating accident where all three eventually succumbed to hypothermia and their bodies were later lost at sea. Sole survivor Nick Schuyler co-wrote a book about the experience in 2010, titled Not Without Hope.