The United States Coast Guard announced on Sunday it would be suspending the search for a 7-year-old boy who went missing on Friday during a boating trip with two other passengers who were later found dead.

Suspending an active search for a missing child is an exceptionally difficult decision and is only made after the most exhaustive efforts have occurred,”

The boy, his father Michael Slezak, and another man, Sam Wooley, were shrimping near Pelican Bay on a 22-foot boat named Marty Ann. Search and rescue teams and the U.S. Coast Guard began searching when they failed to return to shore.

The U.S. Coast Guard "indefinitely suspended" its search for 7-year-old Hunter Slezak who went missing days ago on a boating trip with his father and a family friend under still unclear circumstances.

The search for Hunter Slezak, 7, has been suspended after the bodies of his father and a family friend were recovered in Alabama the U.S. Coast Guard stated in a release

The Coast Guard recovered the bodies of two boaters off the Alabama coast but suspended the search for a missing 7-year-old boy after combing the area over the weekend