A Fisherman Vanished Into an Underwater Cave. 15 Days Later, They Found Him Alive.

Erasto Crisanto Valdez, 31, was fishing with his father near San Francisco La Paz in Mexico's Uxpanapa region on July 23 when he followed a fish into a cave and lost track of the way out. He didn't resurface. His family and local authorities assumed the search that followed would end in a recovery, not a rescue.

Divers Harry Gust and Rosalino "Rosso" Rivera joined the operation expecting the same. Six days in, the team found a harpoon believed to be his at a depth of about 65 metres, over 200 feet down, a sign he'd gone further into the cave system than anyone expected. It took more than a week after that to actually reach him. On August 7, Gust made it into a submerged chamber over 100 metres below the surface and called out. Someone called back.

Crisanto had survived in an air pocket that far underground for two weeks, drinking whatever water he could find and spending most of the time either asleep or, by his own account, in prayer. He told rescuers afterward that he thought only three days had passed. Divers brought him breathing equipment and guided him back through roughly 100 yards of flooded passage to the surface.

The search pulled in specialist cave divers from Mexico, Germany, the United States, and the Dominican Republic, people who fly toward exactly this kind of situation instead of away from it. Crisanto was hospitalized afterward with dehydration and malnutrition, but alive, after two weeks that most people wouldn't have bet on ending that way.