A 21-year-old diver was miraculously rescued by his family following he was swept away by the Gulf Stream while diving more than five miles from the Florida Keys.
Dylan Gartenmayer, a diver and spearfisherman, described the moment he heard the purr of his grandfather’s boat as he watched helplessly as the sun set over shark-infested waters.
A few hours earlier on Thursday followingnoon, Mr Gartenmayer was with two friends on a boat, when he decided to do one last dive around West Sambo Reef.
“I do a lot of deep freediving, so I like to go deeper than 30 meters in one breath,” the young man explained.
His friends, who were waiting on the boat, nevertheless began to worry when he did not come back. They believed he had passed out from lack of oxygen, Gartenmayer said.
The facts were no less disturbing. Indeed, during this dive, Mr. Gartenmayer was a little more than 10 meters below the surface when currents carried him to more than 45 meters deep.
The diver was held underwater for approximately two minutes. It was spat out regarding a mile away.
His friends alerted the US Coast Guard and his family, who began a desperate search, racing once morest the setting sun.
After emerging, Mr Gartenmayer swam more than a mile towards a reef, where he cut mooring buoys which he tied together to form a makeshift raft.
“I was watching the sun go down pretty quickly,” the young man said in a video posted on social media.
Mackerel began to beach around him, attracting the attention of sharks.
“I saw a reef shark pass in front of me,” he said.
As the temperature began to drop and the cold set in, the diver used the buoys to keep his body as far out of the water as possible.
“By then I was starting to shiver and my hands were a little numb, as were my toes, so I knew it was starting to get serious,” he detailed.
A rescue mission involving Coast Guard boats and planes was underway.
“A small plane flew over me, but they did not see me, remembered Mr. Gartenmayer. About 30 minutes later they came back, but they still haven’t seen me.”
The scenario will repeat itself with a helicopter and a boat, both of which will pass in the distance without noticing it.
Shortly following, the sun disappeared over the horizon. To the east, it was dark.
“When I saw the sun go down, I knew things were starting to get a little more terrible,” he said.
But a few moments later, he heard the sound of engines, and recognized those of his grandfather.
His family had been looking for him for several hours already.
Just minutes following arriving at the reef, one of Mr Gartenmayer’s friends said he spotted something strange in the distance: buoys were drifting together.
As they approached, they saw him on the surface, just under 500 kilometers from where he had dived four hours earlier.
In the video, Mr. Gartenmayer’s family and friends can be seen emotionally exclaiming when they spot him.
“My mom took my scuba gear. She started hugging me, crying,” Gartenmayer said.
“It’s a miracle that we fell on my son, like a needle in a haystack. You are in the middle of the ocean,” said the young man’s mother.
Once on board, he was transferred to a coastguard boat and taken to shore. Although his temperature was low at first, he was discharged from the coastguard an hour later.
