Two aviators were safely plucked from San Diego Bay by an alert fishing boat crew after their Navy jet crashed Wednesday in the water near Shelter Island.

The 10:15 a.m. crash on a rainy and misty morning happened as the aircrew was executing a “go around” maneuver at Naval Air Station North Island, according to Navy officials. The plane had just landed and was preparing to take off again when the crew ejected from the aircraft, said Navy Cmdr. Beth Teach.

The two aviators ejected before the jet hit the water. Navy officials said the two crew members were “quickly recovered before being transported to a local hospital for medical assessment,” and that both were stable.

Sportfishing boat captain Brandon Viets and his crew were headed out for an excursion on Premier, with about a dozen clients aboard, and were not far from the Shelter Island fishing pier when a sound at the stern caught his attention. He turned and spotted the westbound plane flying “super low.”

There was no one in the plane, he said. Then he saw two parachutes off to the side. His next thought: “Oh my God.”

“I watched them touch water, and I told my crew, ‘We got to go,’” the 30-year-old said. “We spin the boat around and race over there.”

As soon as Premier pulled up to the aviators, the jet slammed into the bay “maybe 1,000 feet from us,” Viets said. “It was crazy.”

As the 81-foot fishing boat approached, the aviators confirmed they had unhooked from their parachutes — a danger around the boat propellers, Viets said. The two Navy aircrew members climbed up a boarding ladder onto Premier.

“They seemed very calm for what had just happened,” Viets said. “Their composure was very impressive.”

Coast Guard spokesperson Adam Stanton said the two aviators were in the water for a minute or two before the fishing boat rescued them. The pair was then transferred to a Customs and Border Protection boat and taken to shore. San Diego Fire-Rescue officials said the rescued aviators were taken to UC San Diego Medical Center in Hillcrest.

Navy officials said that Naval Base Coronado “stood up an Emergency Operations Center in response to the mishap” and was assessing the crash site. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The plane was an EA-18G Growler assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 135 based out of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state. A variant in the F/A-18 family, it is used to jam enemy communications and radar systems. The plane typically carries a pilot and a weapons systems officer. It has a price tag of about $67 million, according to the Navy.

One witness said that after the pilots ejected from the jet, the plane flew over Point Loma homes, then circled around and went back over homes before crashing into the bay.

Point Loma resident Katharine Hope, who lives near Kellogg Street in the La Playa neighborhood across the bay from Shelter Island, was in her living room when she looked up and saw a jet coming toward her condo.

Typically, after planes take off from North Island, they veer toward the open ocean while still over the bay. This one kept heading west — straight toward Hope.

As it passed overhead, Hope noticed two parachutes landing in the water and realized the pilots had ejected and were in the bay.

“And then maybe 30 seconds to a minute later — I wasn’t timing it and it happened so quickly — the jet came from the other direction, over our condo and landed into the water in front of our place.”

She said it was flying fast and low and “the sound was horrific.”

Once the plane hit the water, she said, there was an explosion and black smoke. And then it sank.

“It just was swallowed up,” she said. “It just disappeared.”

Harbor Police and other responding boats placed an orange boom line around the crash site in the water to contain the debris field and limit any potential environmental spills, according to Harbor Police.

“The Navy is primary on the cleanup of all of this, so really not sure how their investigation is going to go and how long it’s going to take,” Harbor Police Lt. Daniel Moen said.

Crews working on the recovery efforts battled choppy waves under cold, gray skies as the wind whipped through palm trees along the shore.

The crash happened right outside the Shelter Island basin in the northwest area of the bay. The immediate area near the crash site was closed to mariners, although the main traffic channel of the bay remained open.

Jet fuel from the crash led San Diego County officials to order people to stay out of the water along the Kellogg Beach shoreline around Lawrence Street.

Justin Eaves, who is vacationing in San Diego, said he saw the Navy jet crash after hearing it go over his motel near Shelter Island.

“It did a couple of maneuvers. You could hear it when it went over the motel and then it was kind of quiet and then it kicked up again,” Eaves told OnScene TV. “And all of a sudden, a few seconds later, I just saw the plane going straight down into the water.”

He said the pilots who ejected were a short distance away in the water and he saw boats heading toward them.

“Thank God that nobody — all this stuff right over here that plane could have hit,” he said. “Luckily it didn’t. (It was) very fortunate.”

After the aviators were back on land, the fishing boat crew stayed at the scene for a while. When they got the clear to leave, Viets said, the crew and clients aboard Premier “got bait and went fishing for a couple hours.”

The EA-18G Growler was built to replace the EA-6B Prowler and was the first newly designed electronic warfare aircraft produced in more than 35 years. The first Growler test aircraft went into production in October 2004 and made its first flight in August 2006. Its first deployment was in November 2010.

Wednesday’s mishap is the second Growler downed in recent months. On Oct. 15, a Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft from Electronic Attack Squadron 130 crashed east of Mount Rainier during a routine training flight. Both crew members aboard died.

Staff writer Caleb Lunetta contributed to this report.