An 80-year-old diver, Ignacio Siberio, was rescued after spending about 20 hours clinging to a buoy after his boat went adrift off the Florida Keys.
Siberio, a Cuban-born lawyer, was spear-fishing on Saturday, as he has done most weekends for six decades, when his boat’s anchor line broke and drifted away.
The elderly man swam for 4,8km to try to retrieve the vessel. But he failed and could only grab hold of a lobster-trap buoy, hoping that another boat would see him.
His wife, Gloria, worried when he did not return and telephoned a nephew, Carlos Lopez, who alerted the Coast Guard and started his own search.
It was Lopez who found Siberio on Sunday — after the Coast Guard had ended its search and the diver had survived a night at sea that experts said would have killed most people.
Lopez located his uncle’s fishing boat run aground on the coast and then found him as he searched among lobster-trap buoys.
Siberio told United States media he had seen helicopters overhead but they had not spotted him.
”I had only one thought that I put like a fixation: ‘I could not do this to my family’,” Siberio said.
”With every passing moment, I worried about falling into a state that would make me lose my strength.”
Siberio was lucky to be dressed in a diving suit that kept him warm. Doctors said he had only slight hypothermia and Siberio insisted he would soon return to sea to indulge in his favourite sport. — Sapa-AFP