CANBERRA, Australia — A shrimp fisherman who swam 12 hours to shore to get help after his trawler sank, leaving him and his two crewmates clinging to flotsam, was hailed as a hero today.

Michael Williams, a 39-year-old deckhand aboard the trawler Sea Rogue, reached shore at New Brighton Beach, where passers-by found him Wednesday afternoon, police said. Crewman John Jarrett was found at sea Thursday and the search for 40-year-old skipper Charlie Picton was called off late Thursday.

Because the trawler was only one day into a four-day fishing trip, Jarrett, known as JJ, told his sister they feared a search would not begin for another three days.

"JJ said: 'We'll be out here for at least three days because no one knows we're here,' so brave Michael swam all the way to shore," Rosemary Jarrett told Nine Network television outside Ballina District Hospital, where her brother was being treated for exposure.

"He's my hero. He's all our hero," she said.

Jarrett, who survived 30 hours in the 75-degree water, recounted his harrowing ordeal Thursday, telling how he clung desperately to a fiberglass cooler lid while trying vainly to help his exhausted skipper stay afloat.

Jarrett said Picton held on for hours but eventually drifted away, according to a friend of the crew, Mark McMurtrie.

Authorities called off an air search for Picton late Thursday. "The evidence suggests that the victim has drowned," a police statement said.

A search helicopter found Jarrett, 41, about nine miles off the coast at Ballina, clinging to the cooler lid that also was used on the trawler as a shrimp-sorting table, Ten Network television reported.

McMurtrie, who said he learned of the details from Jarrett, said the shrimper capsized and sank before dawn Wednesday off Ballina. Its nets had snagged on a reef about eight miles offshore.

When Williams reached New Brighton Beach, resident Chris Gort was among the first on the scene.

"I was walking along the beach and came across a female who had found this gentleman that had claimed he had been swimming for hours in the water and claimed that his boat had sunk," Gort told Sky News television.

"He had pretty bad cuts and bruises to his legs and his arms. He was pretty exhausted, pretty badly sunburnt," Gort added.