Sometimes all you need is your parents, and a few friends. Even when you’re lost in the ocean. Because moms, and family, are superheroes.

One Florida family learned that a family’s love could even beat the Coast Guard, when a 22-year-old son went missing while diving in the ocean.

And like most moments in life these days, even this harrowing event was caught on camera. 

On now-deleted Instagram stories, Dylan Gartenmayer explained that he had been ‘drift diving’ in the ocean when a massive current swept him away from his friends, who had been diving with him. According to Gartenmayer, drift diving allows you to use the waters tide to explore the waters.

He said he thought he had ended up more than a mile away from his original location, and anywhere up to 150 feet below the water’s surface. He told NBC Miami that he held his breath underwater for 2 minutes until he could make it up to the top.

Dylan Gartenmayer and his mother, Tabitha, discuss his rescue from the ocean. Photo from The Today Show.

He said then, when he realized the boat wasn’t there, he knew “that things were starting to get serious.”

Freezing, Gartenmayer found a piece of floating bamboo and used it to lever himself up out of the water a bit. He said he had planned to try and “make a swim for it” to a nearby reef.

I knew that the further and further I got out, the less of a chance I’d be found, and it was taking me out deeper and deeper,” he said.

As the sun started going down, Gartenmayer knew things were getting “more dire” when a reef shark swam by him. 

During that time, the U.S. Coast Guard had been searching for him for more than two hours. But his mother, and the rest of his family and friends refused to wait. Grabbing his grandfather’s boat, the family was seen in a now-viral TikTok speeding past onlookers, with boats rocking in the water, as they passed.

Gartenmayer’s cousin, Priscilla Gartenmayer, shared a video that a neighbor sent her. In it, you can see the family going “full throttle down the canal to save Dylan.’”

@kwmermaidp Replying to @funnyecho When I say we were not playing, we were not playing 😂😂 #diverescue #missingdiver ♬ original sound – Priscilla Gartenmayer

In a later video on TikTok that she also posted. you can hear the joy and relief in the voices screaming “there he is!” 

“By some miracle,” Gartenmayer said, “my parents and everybody else on board my grandfather’s boat had ended up driving and basically landing right on top of me.” He had used his spear from when he had been fishing to wave his family down. His parents dragged him onto the boat, hugging him to keep him warm.

@kwmermaidp So thankful 💙 #lostatsea #rescue #keywest #freedive #drifting #florida ♬ original sound – Priscilla Gartenmayer

One commenter said, “Imagine feeling hopeless, and then there is everyone who has ever loved you coming to your rescue.”

His mother, Tabitha Gartenmayer told NBC that she was “spear-fishing with Dylan in my belly.” Tabitha Gartenmayer told NBC. Upon learning her son was lost at sea, Tabitha described feeling like she couldn’t breathe.

The Coast Guard met the family and checked on Gartenmayer. According to the TikTok video he had a “low core temperature, but that’s about it.”

Tabitha said getting the call that her son was missing in the ocean still haunts her.

“It literally took my breath away,” she said, trying not to cry. “I couldn’t even breathe, everything just went away.”

“This is definitely a miracle,” she said.