Officially, they’re called Aviation Survival Technicians—which is a mouthful. Calling them rescue swimmers would be a lot easier… of course, there’s little that’s easy when it comes to the Coast Guard’s most elite unit. They are highly trained and relentlessly conditioned field operatives. But in this case the enemy is the weather. To qualify for this role, the roughly 75 candidates a year must make it through an 18-week training program at the swimmer school in Elizabeth City, North Carolina—a place where the graduation rate hovers at 50 percent. Ben Cournia, the swimmer who orchestrated the rescue of the Minouche, started his class with 9 trainees. He was one of three that graduated—and for one of those guys, it was his second time trying. He’d originally been in a class with 11 would-be rescue swimmers who all washed out.

The program was born out of a 1984 tragedy when the cargo ship Marine Electric, en route from Virginia to Massachusetts sank, in a February storm with 34 crew members on board. Coast Guard helicopters arrived at the scene and lowered baskets for the survivors. But the frigid sailors in the water were too numb from the cold to pull themselves into the baskets. Eventually, navy swimmers were called in to help. But it was too late for the majority of them. Even though the choppers had arrived in time to rescue plenty of the men, 31 died. In the aftermath, Congress held hearings to understand how the tragedy could occur, and mandated the establishment of the Coast Guard rescue swimmer program, to be modeled after one the U.S. Navy was running.

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Today, at what is known as A-School, the days start early with land-based endurance training: sprints, push-ups, rope climbing, endurance jogs, kettle bell training, followed by water-based endurance in the form of 2000-yard laps, 500-yard sprints, swimming with weights, treading water with weights, underwater exertion. Then the instructors put the candidates through endless “water confidence” drills. These are simulations using a large pool with wind and rain machines that can mimic category one hurricane conditions. Life and death role-playing is a constant. Candidates may face a pool full of shipwrecked fishermen, or an F-16 pilot tangled up in his own parachute. Instructors playing victims thrash and wrestle with their rescuers in the water. This is where the wannabe rescuers learn techniques in staying calm and subduing frightened, drowning people who need their help. The instructors’ goal is to ensure that only those with the calmest nerves are dropping into the water. As the instructors like to say, “If you panic, they die.” And so, if a candidate loses one of the survivors in training, it almost inevitably means ejection from the program.

But if they do graduate, their training is not over. They go on for Emergency Medical Technician training in Petaluma, California. When training is complete, they will become part of a four-member helicopter crew, with on-board duties running the search cameras and some of the radio equipment—that is, when they’re not deployed by the aircraft to search and swim and rescue.

That ultimately, is the job of the AST—or, you know, the rescue swimmer—to save lives in the harshest conditions imaginable. It’s the purpose enshrined in their motto: “So others may live.” For the sake of future victims as well as the swimmer’s own good, only the most prepared are allowed to do the job.

Watch: Into the Storm: What It Was Like to Rescue a Ship's Crew