Video Catches Moment A 22-Year-Old Is Found Alive After Being Stranded At Sea
22-year-old Dylan Gartenmayer is counting his blessings, after miraculously being found alive after being left at sea for hours.
Last Thursday, Dylan and his friends were spearfishing and deep sea diving off the coast of Key West.
However, upon his last dive attempt, Dylan got caught up in a powerful Gulf Stream that swept him underwater and away from the boat. He believes he was underwater for nearly two minutes - just holding his breath as he was being tossed and thrown about.
Eventually Gartenmayer was able to rise to the ocean surface, however he was over a mile away from where he originally dived.
His friends obviously didn't know that he got caught up in the Stream and thought he passed out from lack of oxygen where he was driving. They began searching for him but couldn't find him before they frantically called his mother - who jumped in a boat with her family. As they sped towards their friends' boat they contacted the Coast Guard who launched a search and rescue mission.
Video on social media caught their boat speeding at 40mph through a canal that had a 5mph limit.
Hey, you'd do the same thing if your family member was missing too and stranded in the damn ocean!
DYLAN HAD BEEN DEEP SEA DIVING HIS WHOLE LIFE
However, Dylan's peril was just beginning.
As he came out of the water far from the boat, Dylan realized he couldn't tread water forever. Fortunately, he said he spotted a buoy about a mile away and began swimming towards it. Along the way he was able to grab some bamboo and use that to swim with.
Eventually, he made it to the buoy. He tied a piece of the bamboo between the two buoy's and held on for dear life.
"I had a bunch of bait floating up around me and everything," Gartenmayer said. "There were big fish eating those baits and there were sharks that were going to be shortly behind them... I was ready to fight the night out... but I'm glad I didn't have to," he added.
After scouring the coordinates that Dylan was diving at to no avail, Dylan's father Joel said he spotted some sort of object in the far distance.
The family sped the boat over and found Dylan... clutching onto the buoy's and alive! He had been treading water at sea for nearly three hours.
DYLAN WAS AT SEA FOR OVER 3 HOURS
In a statement to NBC, the Coast Guard admitted that Dylan being found was nothing short of a miracle. "Too often missing diver cases don’t have positive outcomes, and the circumstances of this case didn’t forecast for one," said Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator, Lieutenant Commander Elizabeth Tatum. "His foresight to lash mooring balls together to make him a bigger target in the water was smart," she added.
The family overjoyed to find Dylan alive and well. As for Dylan? He told NBC that he can't wait to go back and dive into the ocean again.