The Coast Guard called off its search Monday for a teenager who was swept to sea with his parents in northern California over the weekend while trying to rescue the family dog, saying it's not likely the 16-year-old boy could have survived the cold waters.

Officials recovered the bodies of the teen's mother and father Saturday afternoon at Big Lagoon, about 32 miles north of Eureka, Calif., in Humboldt County. Authorities say the family was trying to rescue their dog from powerful surf, after the canine was pulled into the ocean by powerful, 10-foot waves, The Associated Press reported.

The Humboldt County Coroner's office on Monday identified the parents as Mary Elena Scott, 57, and Howard Kuljian, 54, of Freshwater, Calif. The missing teen was identified as Gregory Kuljian.

Coast Guard Lt. Bernie Garrigan told the AP the search for the missing boy was stopped Monday, saying that a person without a wetsuit could not survive for long in the frigid surf.

On Saturday, the teen had gone after the dog, and the father followed him into the water to attempt a rescue, State Parks District Superintendent Dana Jones told the AP. The 16-year-old was able to get out of the waves, but then went back into the water with his mother to find his father, the AP reported.

"Both were dragged into the ocean," Jones told the AP, noting that the dog got out of the water on its own.

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The Coast Guard said the parents' daughter reportedly was the one who called 911, The Times-Standard in Eureka reported.

Earlier, the AP reported the Coast Guard tried using a helicopter and two motor life boats to try to find the missing teen, but thick coastal fog had suspended the aerial search.

Officials say the Big Lagoon beach has a steep shoreline where the waves roll in and crash onto the sand, which makes the area dangerous, the AP reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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A man and woman are dead and a teenage boy is missing after the trio were swept into the ocean by big waves in northern California while trying to rescue their dog, according to media reports.

The accident happened Saturday afternoon at Big Lagoon about 32 miles north of Eureka in Humboldt County.

Family members went into the water to try to save their pet dog, which had been pulled away by 8- to 10-foot waves, KTVU-TV reported.

The mother and father drowned and their bodies were recovered. They were pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Times-Standard.  A 16-year-old boy, believed to be the couple’s son, was missing.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the daughter called police, according to KTVU.

The dog managed to make it to safety, the TV station reported.

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If not for them, this story would have a tragic ending.

Six family members in Oregon are credited with saving eight children from drowning in a lake over the weekend, investigators said.

Evan Gibson, April MacLean, Lorne MacLean, Lura Kirby, Michelle Rushing and Eric MacLean were attending a family reunion Saturday in a picnic area near the shore of Henry Hagg Lake when the group heard people screaming.

“I think we knew what was happening because we had been there enough to know the conditions at the lake,” said Gibson at a news conference Sunday. “The family, of course, didn’t know what was happening with (the first child to go in), so they all went off the edge and none of them could swim.”

Brent Wojahn / The Oregonian

Michelle Rushing (front) explains Sunday at a press conference how she and her family saved eight kids from drowning in Henry Hagg Lake in Oregon. Other Gibson family members are (from left) Evan Gibson, Eric MacLean, Steve MacLean, April MacLean and Laura Kirby.

Investigators say eight children, ages 6 to 13, and a few adults stepped off a steep drop-off as they waded out into the lake. Seeing this, the six family members jumped into the water and started pulling the children out.

“I started yelling, ‘They’re drowning, they’re drowning,’” Michelle Rushing said at the news conference.

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Gibson was the first to reach the water and saved two of the children’s mothers, who had run in after them but couldn’t get past where the lake falls off from ankle deep to 15 feet, the Oregonian reported.

April MacLean then grabbed the first two bodies she could get hold of and passed them to Gibson.

Farther in the water, Rushing grabbed a small girl but tripped over another submerged body.

“We realized we had no idea how many were underwater,” Rushing said.

“She quickly dug for the second body, another unconscious girl, and passed both children to Eric MacLean.

“We just sort of formed a chain, but I had tripped over a couple of them, and so I was trying to get down and I brought one up,” Rushing said.

Within four minutes, the rest of the eight children had been accounted for, the Oregonian reported.

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Moments later a dive team from the nearby Gaston Fire Department arrived to find damp, mud-covered children and adults wrapped in towels, panting.

In his 46 years on the job, “I have been through every kind of rescue scenario you can probably dream,” Gaston Fire Chief Roger Messenbrink told the Oregonian. “Never have I seen this sort of outcome. A trained team would have done no better.”

“You can call it luck, but I call it good old hard work and paying attention to human life,” Messenbrink said.

Investigators say the close call could have been avoided. None of the kids was wearing a life jacket, even though a nearby life jacket loaner station was fully stocked.

“I hope that people will learn and whether their children are good swimmers or not, have them in life jackets,” Rushing said.

As a precaution, paramedics took all the kids to the hospital, and all were released.  

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Saul Young / AP

The scene at German Creek Marina in Bean Station, Tenn., on Wednesday after several children were shocked while swimming.

When Kevin Ritz read about the children who died after being shocked by electricity while swimming in lakes in Missouri and Tennessee on Wednesday, he thought about his 8-year-old son, Lucas, and the dozens of others who have died this way.

“Everyone goes, ‘How can that happen?’” Ritz said.

In 1999, Ritz’s children were swimming in the Multnomah Channel of the Willamette River in Oregon when suddenly, Lucas let out a gasp and apparently became unconscious. His life jacket flipped him over so that his face was out of the water. As his wife jumped in the water to save their son, she felt paralyzed, a feeling she attributed to fear. His other son later reported that he, too, felt numb and tingly.

Law enforcement officers told Ritz that his son had drowned, but Ritz pushed them to investigate further. His son’s face, he said, hadn’t been submerged and he had been wearing a life jacket.

“With my digital voltmeter, I went to the area where Lucas had been, put the negative lead to a ground, dropped the positive lead into the water, and immediately got AC voltage,” he wrote in an essay about his son’s death. “I notified the Sheriff’s Department, reporting what I had found and that I wanted to get someone to confirm my test. They agreed to send out some deputies while I called in an electrician. He arrived later that morning, tracing the electricity to a powerboat that was in the area where the kids had been swimming.”

Children electrocuted while swimming in lakes

In the throes of grief, Ritz, now a marine electrician, started agitating for safer marinas. It infuriated him, for example, that electrical outlets at marinas were not held to the same standards as outlets in bathrooms.

“The European market has had ground fault protection in their marinas – the power coming into the marina at the docks – for over 25 years,” Ritz told msnbc.com. “How come we can’t have that?”

The obstacles are many, however. Ritz said that a marina manager near where he lives wanted to upgrade some of the marina’s electrical system but learned that, by law, he would also have to upgrade the whole system – a pricey proposition.

Herb Hall, president of Sierra Boat Co., a Lake Tahoe marina specializing in classic and wooden motorboats, said having good electrical systems on the docks is discussed at an annual marina conference, but that some marinas “unfortunately aren’t successful and don’t have the money to maintain things.”

“On an annual basis, you need to be inspecting out on your docks,” Hall said. “Most marinas have floating docks. You have flexible connections going out on the docks that are moving all the time, and those chafe and wear and separate.”

2nd boy dies after shock incident in Tenn. lake

Ritz works with David Rifkin to keep a list of those who have died from what they call electric shock drowning. Their list is anecdotal, because that cause of death is impossible to determine in an autopsy, Ritz said.

Rifkin counts more than 50 people who have died in that manner since the mid-1980s, but he said the actual number is likely many times that.

“Most of the time when these things happen and there’s no reason to believe it’s electrical in nature, it’s listed as a drowning,” Rifkin said. “We’re thinking the numbers could be one hundred-fold.”

Rifkin’s list does not include those that occurred Wednesday – he said he does not yet have enough information to include them.

But the deaths on the Fourth resemble the others on the list, in that all occurred in freshwater. Alexandra Anderson, 13, and her 10-year-old brother, Brayden, were swimming in Lake of the Ozarks, a freshwater lake in Missouri. Noah Winstead, 10, and his friend Nathan Lynam, 11, died after being shocked in Cherokee Lake in Tennessee.

Rifkin has no documented cases of deaths in saltwater. He says that’s because of the high voltage gradient that would have to be present.

“When these things happen, I'm often called in to find the electrical fault,” Ritz said. “I spend a good portion of my life educating first responders and law enforcement on this issue in hopes that lives will be saved.”

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Police believe the drowning deaths of twin 4-year-old boys in a north Texas swimming pool were accidental, Arlington Police spokeswoman Cheryel Carpenter told msnbc.com.

The father of Mark and Luke Nguyen called Arlington police around 10:30 p.m. after finding his boys face-down in the pool behind their grandmother’s home. It was still warm outside from a day that had reached triple digits.

The boys’ mother, Huong Nguyen, told wfaa.com that her husband and sons were checking in on her mother-in-law because she has diabetes.

Carpenter said the father's brother-in-law was also at the home.

Within minutes, the boys apparently slipped away to the pool, Carpenter said, managing to breach a black iron fence around the perimeter of the pool. She said police do not know if the gate was latched.

The father found the boys unconscious in the pool. He jumped in, pulled them out and administered CPR while waiting for paramedics. The boys died en route to the hospital.  

The parents, who also have a 1-year-old child, face no charges. 

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Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET: Two swimmers who vanished in rip currents off the New Jersey shore were found drowned Thursday.

Both incidents occurred at beaches where no lifeguards were on duty.

Garrett Giberson, public information officer for the Asbury Park fire department, told NJ.com, website of the Star-Ledger newspaper. “Basically the bottom line is this: When lifeguards are off duty, stay out of the water. Rip tides are dangerous and obviously deadly. It's not worth your life."

The Asbury Park Press reportedthat authorities believe the body recovered in about 15 feet of water 200 yards offshore in Asbury Park’s 2nd Avenue beach is Chazmin Miles, 23, of Irvington.

Miles disappeared while trying to help his younger sister, who was rescued Wednesday evening.

See the Star-Ledger photo gallery

Hot in Northeast? 'You ain't seen nothing yet'

The body of Bestavros Faris, 18, of Bayonne, was pulled early Thursday afternoon from waters about 150 yards offshore from the O Street beach in Seaside Park, where he disappeared a day earlier, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Andrew Mills / The Star-Ledger

Asbury Park firefighter Brett Nielson pauses as he prepares to enter the surf, Thursday, to search for the body of a 23-year-old man who disappeared while swimming after lifeguards had gone off duty Wednesday in Asbury Park, N.J. The body was recovered after a short search by divers.

"The wave grabbed him far away from me," friend Andrew Messiha told NBCNewYork.com. "I was standing near the shore. He called for help, but no one came because there was no lifeguard."

Faris and his friends were sucked into the currents late Wednesday afternoon; rescuers managed to retrieve three swimmers.

Faris' friends and family had kept vigil on the beach into the night, crying and praying as they waited for news but declined to speak with NBCNewYork.com after the body was found.

"It's very unusual to deal with these rip currents this time of year," Seaside Park Police Chief Francis Larkin told NBCNewYork.com. "Usually, it's hurricane season in September."

Newark, N.J., on Wednesday saw a record high of 98 degrees and relentless heat was expected to continue Thursday.

Strong rip currents kept rescuers busy elsewhere along the Jersey Shore. In Perth Amboy, two children were rescued from the water by a 36-year-old bystander and his 17-year-old son. The rescuers administered CPR to one child.

Andrew Mills / The Star-Ledger

Asbury Park firefighters, N.J. State Police Troopers and U.S. Coast Guard personnel work Thursday to recover a body about 200 yards offshore at the 2nd Avenue beach in Asbury Park, where a 23-year-old man disappeared while swimming after lifeguards had gone off duty yesterday.

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