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A young diver who was lost at sea for more than four hours last week recounted his harrowing experience, and his miraculous rescue, in an emotional interview for Today.
Sitting next to his mother, who helped save him, 21-year-old diver and spearfisherman Dylan Gartenmayer recounted the terrifying experience, describing losing hope as he waited to be found as the sun began to set.
The incident occurred just under a week ago, several miles off the Florida Keys, and ultimately culminated in the diver’s salvation, thanks to his quick-thinking family launching their own search party upon learning of his plight.
Spearfishing without oxygen tank – as usual in freediving – Gartenmayer was stranded at sea last Thursday after the powerful current of the Gulf Stream caught up with it and dragged it into deeper water than it intended.
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Scuba diver and spearfisherman Dylan Gartenmayer, 21, sat next to his mother, Tabitha, as he recounted his harrowing account of the terrifying experience, which occurred just under a week ago several miles off the Florida Keys.
Family members, including the veteran swimmer’s mother, launched a search operation that saw him discovered more than four hours later, clinging to two buoys that he tied to form a makeshift raft just as the sun was setting.
Separated from his friends, and a few hours after sunset, Gartenmayer, a Florida native who grew up spearfishing in the Keys, described surfacing breathlessly toward his friends’ boat almost out of sight, in terrifying and unknown territory.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk,’ Gartenmayer told Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, seemingly unfazed after the near-death experience.
“I was getting dragged further and further and I could see the boat getting smaller,” Gartenmayer said. “I was like, okay, this is starting to get serious.”
Forced to stay afloat as his friends disappeared in the distance, the experienced diver quickly realized the gravity of the situation and swam to a nearby reef where he cut mooring buoys to form a makeshift raft.
Knowing that his best chance of saving himself was to wait for rescue, Gartenmayer, as the hours passed, managed to stay afloat as best he could, but knew his chances were slim as the sun was rapidly setting and twilight was descending over the Gulf.
Forced to stay afloat when his friends disappeared in the distance, the experienced diver quickly realized the gravity of the situation and managed to survive until he was discovered.
“Watching the sunset was like making my heart sink,” said the experienced swimmer, describing his deteriorating hope. “I thought, this is going to be a long night here.”
When the temperatures started to drop, Gartenmayer said it was thanks to the buoys that he was able to get as high as he could.
‘That [was] the idea with the buoys,’ Gartenmayer said. “I try to get as high up as I can, get a little bit of warmth and less of my body in the water for potential predators.”
During this stage of the interview, his mother Tabitha, who was part of the family-led search party that eventually found Gartenmayer, seemed disturbed by her son’s account.
Asked what it was like when Tabitha and other family members carried him to safety on the boat and his mother greeted him with a warm hug, Gartenmayer replied: “The greatest forever.”
Also a spearfisher, she recounted her horror upon receiving the fateful call that he was missing, prompting her and other family members to take their own boat out into the Florida surf as darkness fell.
It was thanks to her bravery and quick thinking, Gartenmayer said, and not Coast Guard officers and helicopters called in to assist in the search, that she was ultimately saved.
“The worst call I’ve ever received in my life,” Tabitha Gartenmayer said of learning her son was missing. “I worry every time he goes out because he sometimes pushes the limit,” she added, her face streaked with concern. ‘He Sometimes he dives at night and descends 100 feet. So that scares you.
She said she received the call from Gartenmayer’s father, her ex-husband, after their son had already there was an hour left.
‘The way it sounded literally took my breath away. I couldn’t even breathe,’ the mother said. ‘As if everything was gone. I was, like, standing there stuck.
‘You play that every time you get that feeling. So I handed my friend the phone and she literally couldn’t talk. I was, like, I was stuck.’
He added that until that moment he did not know that his son “was floating alone in the ocean for hours.”
Outraged at not knowing anything and desperate to find her son, she and other family members traveled to her father’s house, where the diver’s grandfather, also a fisherman, already had a boat ready.
‘They are already on the ship. She literally brought the family together in a matter of seconds,’ Tabitha said proudly. ‘That’s our baby. That’s our baby. And that’s what you do. That’s how we are. We will always be there to protect our family.’
Since Gartenmayer was still floating on the water, the party boarded the boat and traveled 58 miles ‘non-stop’ for over an hour.
Soon enough, they zeroed in on Gartenmayer’s location, and the missing diver said he quickly recognized the hum of his grandfather’s boat, before being graced with the glorious sight of its bow.
The moment he was seen was captured on video and showed family and friends cheering as Gartenmayer used his rifle to row out to his boat.
“Yeah, growing up, seeing that console and I could hear the hum of the engines, oh, that’s my grandfather’s boat,” said the diver.
“It’s a miracle,” added her mother, crying at various points during the emotional reunion. She wanted to jump and catch him.
“Yeah, I’m still like, this is definitely a miracle,” a sheepish Gartenmayer agreed.
Asked what it was like when Tabitha and other family members carried him to safety on the boat and his mother greeted him with a warm hug, Gartenmayer replied: “The greatest forever.”
It was thanks to the quick-wittedness of her mother and other family members, Gartenmayer said, not the litany of Coast Guard officers or helicopters called in to assist in the search, that she was ultimately saved.
That said, even with the close call, the diver said he will continue to do what he loves and will not be deterred by the incident.
His mother, however, was more skeptical, but ultimately supported her son’s choice.
He is a grown man. It is his passion. This is what he loves to do,’ said Tabitha, saying that she was happy to be reunited with her son.
“As long as you’re doing what you like to do, but be safer and go with people who are going to make sure you’re around the boat and keep an eye on you, you know, because that’s so important.” You go with experienced divers. You know, that’s a big problem for me. And that’s a big deal.
“I was fishing with him in my belly,” he added. I know you were born to do this.