For experienced spearfishing diver Dylan Gartenmayer, Thursday was supposed to be just another trip to the sea with friends. What the 22-year-old didn’t know was he would get caught in a powerful current that would separate him from his group and leave him missing at sea.
Gartenmayer’s story of being rescued by his family is now going viral on TikTok.
The Key West native spoke with NBC 6 about being stuck in the water and the events that led to his rescue. He told the outlet that he was free diving while his friends kept a watchful eye on him from their boat. When conditions in the water started to take a turn for worse, the group decided to head back to land.
But before leaving, Gartenmayer wanted to go back in the water one more time.
"So I ran back out and that's where everything started happening," he said.
He told reporters that a current swept him under the water and kept him there for two minutes.
He resurfaced nearly a mile away from his friends.
"So that's how I ended up getting separated," he recalled. "They were mainly looking down, thinking I blacked out from a lack of oxygen."
Tabitha Gartenmayer, his mom, got a call that he was missing. She jumped into action.
"And we get the call from my ex-husband," she recalled. "'Tab, something's wrong with Dylan. They haven't seen him in an hour.' And from that moment on, this feeling came over me, just like this, and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't talk."
Incredible footage posted by the diver’s cousin on TikTok shows the moment when the family found him in the water.
