After combing more than 3,100 miles of open ocean searching for a missing Bay Minette woman, the Coast Guard announced Thursday that it officially suspended its search for Michelle Vilborg at sunset on Wednesday.

"The decision [to suspend the search] looks at numerous factors," Coast Guard Lieutenant Matt Mitchell said, "including the survivability of the person in question in reference to water temperature, how the incident occured, i.e. could they even survive the initial incident, which in this case was falling overboard."

The Coast Guard began its search late Monday night, after reports state that a passenger on the Carnival Holiday heard a splash at approximately 11 p.m. and notified personnel. After a cabin-by-cabin search was called for by the ship's staff, it was discovered that Vilborg, who was on a five-day cruise to Cozumel with her husband, was missing.

Coast Guard units from Louisiana and Florida aided in the search, which commenced about 75 miles southwest of Pensacola, Fla.

"We look at the question of whether all our initial assumptions were correct throughout the case, did we take the right actions and use the appropriate resources in the right location?" Mitchell said. "We go over our work with a fine-toothed comb to make sure we did our job best we could.

"Certainly survivability is the key factor. Search areas grow exponentially over time, and we quickly reached a point where the search area is so large and the odds of survivbaility are so small that searching any more was futile."

Mitchell said that the search for Vilborg carried over into Wednesday due to the optimistic element of a warm Gulf of Mexico. An approximate water temperature of 83 degrees, he said, shows on Coast Guard tools that a person can survive in the water at least 36 hours.

After pinpointing where Vilborg went into the water Monday night, however, Mitchell said the search area grew exponentially over time, extending eventually into a 38-nautical-mile radius at the time of the search's end.

"All the active searching has been suspended," he said. "We never found the person we were looking for, so the case will never be closed from a search and resuce standpoint. It will be open until the person is found."