Diver, 80, survives 18 hours in Atlantic
By the time spear fisherman Ignacio Siberio realised his boat had drifted away in the chilly waters off the Florida Keys, it was too late to signal for help.
Instead, the 80-year-old who dives nearly every weekend, called on his instincts mustering all his mental and physical strength to move his legs underwater to prevent hypothermia.
As night fell, the temperature dropped to about 10 degrees Centigrade (50 degrees Fahrenheit).
Winds picked up from the north, churning the seas and tossing Siberio around as he clung to a buoy.
“You have to concentrate mentally in an extraordinary way so that you don’t get to the point that the cold, the danger, and the fact you are helpless make you quit,” Siberio said. “When you quit, its over.”
Siberio, a lawyer who immigrated to the United States from Cuba, had gone to one of his favourite spear fishing spots off Taverna on Saturday morning. By about 2.30pm he noticed the boat was no longer anchored.
He furiously swam after the boat for about three miles before giving up, grabbing a buoy to a lobster trap and watching his boat drift away in roughly 300ft deep waters.
Siberio had to apply all he knew just to live, and spent more than 18 hours holding on to the buoy in the cold, rough ocean before he was found by a relative yesterday, ending an exhaustive search in the Atlantic.
Siberio’s great nephew, Carols Lope, was on a friend’s boat when they spotted the elderly man swimming to shore early yesterday.
“I’m feeling OK, but I got back home pretty beaten up, because I was all night and all day in one spot without moving,” Siberio said in a telephone interview.
He insists he survived with the help of a wetsuit and instincts developed from more than 60 years of free diving and spear fishing. He did not require hospital treatment, but was recovering at his weekend home in Tavernier.
Coast Guard Petty Officer John Zarr was on duty during the two-day search for Siberio.
“That’s pretty amazing. He’s got to be in excellent physical condition,” Zarr said.
The day he went missing, Siberio’s wife called Lopez to ask if they were together. Lopez realised there may be trouble and called the Coast Guard, which initiated a search.
Siberio’s family grew even more worried yesterday morning, when the Coast Guard found his boat about 23 miles east of Elliott Key – roughly more than 40 miles from where Siberio began diving on Saturday.
At about 2am, the Coast Guard stopped its search. But Siberio didn’t stop fighting. And, sometime in the night, Siberio kicked something “large and hard, a large animal.”
“I don’t know what it was. I was more worried about making it through the night,” Siberio said.
He battled until after daybreak, when he began swimming to shore.
Lopez marvelled at the strength of his great uncle, and said medical personnel were concerned when they checked Siberio’s heart rate after his rescue.
“The paramedic said, ‘Your heartbeat is slow.’ He answered, ‘That’s my normal heart rate,” Lopez said.
Siberio said he was close to death, and noted that most other people who did not have his experience would not likely have made it.
“You can’t start thinking for one second what’s happening to you, because it will take over,” Siberio said. “The sensation that you can die at any moment is constant.”
