A Mile to Malpelo: A Diver's Fight for Survival after Being Left at Sea

Editor’s note: The story of five divers lost at sea while on a liveaboard trip to Malpelo Island, including the heroic effort of the three survivors, made its way around the dive world in late 2016. Below is Peter Morse’s account, as told to Sport Diver contributor Brooke Morton. His story illustrates the danger of strong current, the importance of communication and emergency planning, and the life-saving power of quick thinking and perseverance.

The red flags appeared as soon as Peter Morse arrived in Buenaventura, Colombia, from Australia. The town is the meeting point for boats leaving for the island of Malpelo, a rocky outpost 320 miles off the coast of Colombia known for schooling hammerhead sharks. Morse had traveled all night by bus from Medellin to catch M/V Maria Patricia, and his first interaction with the crew was watching them hoist his bags into a truck bed filled with a few inches of rainfall from an afternoon shower.

But he’d traveled this far, so he literally asked himself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The concern diminished slightly when he met the dive leader, Carlos Jimenez, who came across as “extremely professional, humble and knowledgeable,” says Morse.

It was during the last dive of the last day of the trip when disaster struck.

That dive started at 3:30 p.m., and even as the group entered the water, Jimenez was shivering. Morse learned after the incident that Jimenez had been fixing a mooring deeper than 150 feet earlier that day. Had he known at the time, Morse says that he would have questioned Jimenez about his risk of decompression sickness. But on that day, it was only possible to observe that Jimenez was exhausted.

The group Morse had been diving with, which included Jorge Morales, Dario Rodriguez and Erika Vanessa Diaz, had faith in Jimenez.

And so they followed him, even as he switched up the dive plan. After they got in the Zodiac, Jimenez deviated from the planned site, Arrecife Reef, and elected instead to dive at the Cathedral. Whether that was communicated to the dive boat, Morse will never know.

What Morse realized immediately was that, on that day, the currents were especially strong.

At 3:50 p.m., after a 20-minute encounter with silky sharks, Jimenez shot to 15 feet. He signaled it was time for the safety stop, which the group performed. As they did, they drifted.

Around 4 p.m., they came to the surface, roughly 30 minutes earlier than the Zodiac was expecting them.

All the while, they could see the boat, 900 feet away. Nobody was on deck.

Knowing they had time to kill before the Zodiac was scheduled to pick them up, Diaz and Morse dropped back down to spend more time with the sharks while the others signaled the boat with their surface marker buoys. Ten more minutes passed, then Diaz and Morse resurfaced.

This time, Morse turned his head. The boat had become a speck on the horizon. The current was taking them farther out to sea — and quickly.

In that moment, Morse realized he had a problem.

There was nothing else on the horizon, save for the island of Malpelo. Theirs had been the only boat there that day.

Suddenly, Morse’s mind became very clear. Instinctively, he went into decision-making mode.

“We need to start swimming closer,” he said. Jimenez had a different plan, and told the group, “No, we need to stay together and conserve energy.”

Morse told Jimenez he would swim to the Maria Patricia and alert the crew to the group’s location. And he left.

Initially, Morales tried to swim alongside, but he couldn’t keep up. The current was that strong.

Morse kept tacking, swimming at a 45-degree angle to the current. He changed strokes. But mainly, he faced the water and kicked as hard as he could.

With Malpelo as a landmark, he could tell he was making progress, but it was much slower going than he’d expected.

READ MORE: 10 Rules for Avoiding Dive Emergencies

Still, he was confident he could reach the boat. To stay motivated, Morse pictured what he would do when he reached the boat. Take a shower. Have a beer. But he also made backup plans. He knew there was a ladder and radio on the island.

Around 6:30 p.m., darkness began to fall. The lone swimmer was roughly a mile from Malpelo. Fear took hold as he thought about the fact that once all light disappeared, he would no longer be able to see land and stay on course.

That night, there was no starlight, no moon. Only clouds looked down from overhead. He couldn’t imagine worse conditions as he bobbed over 13-foot swells.

But every 15 seconds, he saw a flash of hope. A tiny lighthouse on the rock beamed a signal, which he could see only from certain angles.

Panic started to trickle in. But he knew if he let it, he wouldn’t survive. Instead, he forced it from his head. He put his regulator in his mouth and started performing a full-on crawl stroke, wearing all his dive gear.

He went as hard as he could until the tank emptied. Then he ditched it, along with his weights.

And he kept swimming.

At 7:30 p.m., he watched as the boat moved north, into the current — farther from him and where he last saw the others drifting farther south. A Zodiac had never been sent in their direction.

READ MORE: How to Stay Warm Underwater

At this point, the night had grown so black that he saw nothing, but he could hear waves crashing against rock. So he changed his plan, deciding to aim for the ladder and try to get on land.

Around 9 p.m., he reached the spot where he had seen a ladder. He reached it only to find that the ladder had been pulled up — by the lone military member and park ranger stationed there, he later learned.

His stomach was heavy with dread. Malpelo has sheer cliffs on all sides, and he hadn’t seen any other way up the rocks. He didn’t have it in him to swim all night against the current.

This is when it first sank in that he might die lost at sea, alone.

But he wasn’t ready to give up. He spent the next few hours swimming and attempting to climb up any rocks that looked as if they’d have purchase. The cliffs ripped his thighs and the palms of his hands — he still has scars — but didn’t yield a foothold to rest upon.

By 3 a.m., the left side of his body was numb. His wetsuit was ripped to shreds, and he could not stop bleeding from his hands and legs. Silky and Galapagos sharks were following him. Still, he swam, kicking his fins. He hadn’t ditched his BC either, which buoyed him enough to keep exhaustion at bay.

Then he found it. Finally, a break. A ledge of rock just wide enough for his feet. He could stand and wait. But he couldn’t sleep. He was too cold, and his mouth was caked with salt from all the seawater consumed.

He must have drifted off, because, just after dawn, the hum of an engine roused him. Frantically, with what energy he had left, he yelled and waved. But the passengers only waved back, which made him wonder if he was hallucinating.

If it was real, he couldn’t miss the chance of rescue, so he leapt from the rock and swam once more. Seeing this, Sten Johansson, of M/V Yemaya II, deployed a Zodiac and rescued Morse. It was 16 hours since his ordeal had begun, on the afternoon the day before. As he told media outlets later, "They saved my life by being there."

Johansson alerted authorities, who scooped up the two Colombian divers, Morales and Rodriguez, both alive, 48 hours later. They had survived in the open ocean, before being rescued by the Colombian naval ship ARC Punta Ardita 39 nautical miles from Malpelo. Later, Morales and Rodriguez told how they had urinated on each other to keep warm, tying themselves together to keep from being separated, and curling up in fetal positions while being circled by silky sharks. Portuguese man o' war jellyfish assaulted them with painful stings.

After an intensive search, Diaz’s body was found one week later, 140 miles southeast of Malpelo. The dive leader, Jimenez, was never found.