Earlier this year, a man survived a 5-hour swim to safety after he fell off his boat in the Pacific Ocean. How did he survive despite freezing waters in the middle of the night? He did it with the help of a seal that guided him to safety.
How a Man Survived a 5-Hour Swim Guided by a Seal
Scott Thompson of California headed into the Santa Barbara Channel on his boat on the evening of January 26, 2022. Although he’s a sea urchin diver, Scott wasn’t out on the water for work this time. The commercial fisherman had just lost his close friend and he was spending some time on the water to clear his mind
Only on his way back in, Thompson had a lapse in judgement. Although the waters were rough, Thompson stood up, lost his balance, and fell out of his boat.
Only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, the man realized he had to act fast.
“I just started swimming as hard as I could, towards the boat,” Thompson explained. “And it really didn’t take too long to realize like, it’s getting farther, I’m not getting closer.”
Because the motor was running, Thompson’s boat moved away from him quickly. And he was left alone in the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean at night.
“I thought to myself,” Thompson recalled, “‘Great, this is how I’m going to die. Today is the day I’m going to die.’”
Thankfully, God sent help, according to the fisherman and others who learned of how the man survived a 5-hour swim.
Check out this twitter user’s response:
Wow, am happy for the survival soul…. God will keep His protection over you and your household
— Olarinde Taiwo James (@james_olarinde) February 18, 2022
You may be wondering how exactly God helped him and how the man survive a 5-hour swim? In truth, at first, he panicked.
Thompson said, “The panic set in, it was like, ‘Wow! This is a pretty heavy situation.’”
But then he became determined to try for survival, telling himself over and over, “You gotta get home to your family.” Thompson was thinking of his wife and children and how they would be impacted.
Soon, he heard a splash that he thought was a shark, which didn’t make him feel any better. That is, until he saw what really made the splash.
“A little seal popped its head out of the water right next to me, and looked at me like, Dude! What are you doing out here?” explained Thompson.
Thompson recalled thinking of the seal like his dog, playful and friendly.
“Come here, little buddy!” Thompson told the seal, explaining the seal would “bob up and down looking at me, then disappear under water, pop back up, and look at me.”
The seal was a source of hope for Thompson, as he recalls, “It was like he was telling me, Hey, Dude! Get your a** in gear and get going! I was starting to run out of things to say to him, so I sang him Grateful Dead songs and told him the same corny dad jokes that I tell my kids.”
Thompson swam for 5 hours with the help of the seal. “The seal would go under water, and he came up and nudged me,” Thompson told news reporters, wondering if the seal knew he had to keep Thompson swimming toward safety.
“Did it know, like hey, this human is in trouble; hey, keep going dude?” Thompson recalled.
Thankfully, the light from an oil rig was something to swim toward. And as the light from the rig became brighter and brighter, Thompson said he was “crying” and “shouting at the sky.” Finally, he made it.
And that’s how the man survived a 5-hour swim to oil Platform Gail around 10pm.
Once on the rig, crew members provided first aid to Thompson and transported him to the hospital for treatment for hypothermia.
Many online who heard of the story credited the man’s survival with the help of the seal to God.
Here’s what one Twitter user said in response to the story:
Wow! A seal! God was watching over him. I’m glad there was a happy ending.
— FreedomNotSocialism (@Bouche20Deborah) February 18, 2022
Even though Thompson had not been a believer of God before the traumatic incident, after the man survived a 5-hour swim with the help of a buddy seal, he has changed his mind.
“I’m a believer that there is a higher power now,” Thompson said. “I don’t know what it is, but there is a power greater than me. That was shown to me and I will never doubt that for the rest of my life.”