Fisherman recounts his amazing tale of survival, adrift in Atlantic

by Johnny Dodd on 2 Sep 2017 If there’s such thing as a worst-case scenario, lobster fisherman John Aldridge found himself smack dab in the middle of it early one morning on July 24, 2013. Aldridge was alone on deck of the Anna Mary at the time, his longtime fishing partner Anthony Sosinski was asleep below, as the boat motored 40 miles out into the Atlantic on autopilot from Long Island’s Montauk harbor.

Before reaching their first string of traps, the 45-year-old fisherman went to work dragging a massive 200-pound ice chest across the deck with a metal hook placed around the cooler’s plastic handle. Then it happened. “I was pulling on it with all my might and the handle snapped,” Aldridge, whose story of survival is chronicled in the recently-released book A Speck In The Sea, tells PEOPLE. “Everything started going by in slow motion.”

Because the stern of their 44-foot vessel had no transom, he stumbled backwards and immediately plunged into the chilly ocean, then watched as the Anna Mary sped away from him in the darkness. His fishing partner was still fast asleep. “I’m screaming, but nobody heard me,” he says. “All of a sudden, I was alone watching the lights fade away. There was nothing in the ocean but me.”

Aldridge panicked as his heavy rubber boots began to fill with water, so he yanked them off, emptied the water out and transformed them into a makeshift life vest. It was just after 3:30 a.m. and he began to shiver as the 72-degree seawater drained the heat from his body.

In the moonlight while treading water to keep afloat, he could make out the dorsal fins of two blue sharks circling him...

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