Diver Dragged to Surface: Line Caught in Propeller

A diver in Venice Beach, Florida, was suddenly yanked off the ocean floor and dragged 60 yards to the surface when her dive flag line tangled with a boat propeller above. Stephanie Holtey, searching for shark teeth, had tied the dive flag line to her wrist.

"It was really scary," Holtey said. "I had no idea what possibly could have snagged the flag."

Holtey sucked in water as her regulator fell out of her mouth, and she screamed when breaking the surface, coughed violently, and discovered two fishermen looking at her. One began to yell at Holtey's partner, Sean Riley, who was videotaping the encounter.

"I got ripped off the ocean floor at 23 feet when my dive flag got wrapped around a boat motor," she wrote on Facebook, where she posted the video. "I own Abyss Explorers, and we videotape all our dives for social media, so thank God we were able to capture this footage as proof and report to the FWC!"

Riley videoed the heated exchange between the fishermen and the divers, with Riley telling them, "You gotta watch out for us!" and the fisherman saying, "We were anchored."

Riley wrote in the Facebook post, "I was [pissed] and really scared. I didn't know what was happening. Just watched her get dragged away from my side and way faster than I could swim, was terrifying. Thank God they knew the line was attached to the boat and started drifting."

State law requires boaters to remain 300 feet away from divers-down warning devices in open water, and to slow to idle speed if they get closer. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will review the video footage to determine whether the fishermen's boat was operating too close to the diver flag or whether it was anchored, as they claimed, and the divers swam toward them.

From an article by David Strege for The Wink