He was swept out to sea for five hours. A broken fishing pole saved him.

If not for a broken fishing pole floating in the Atlantic Ocean, Dan Ho might be dead. His early morning swim off Long Island on Monday turned disastrous when a strong current swept him out to sea and left him treading water for five hours. As his life was now in jeopardy, he scrambled to figure out how to draw attention to himself.

When a broken fishing pole floated by him, the 63-year-old man took off his shirt, attached it to the fishing pole and waved the makeshift flag in the air “in an attempt to notify passing vessels of his presence,” the Suffolk County Police Department said. It worked. “Approximately 2.5 miles south of where he entered the water, Ho was spotted,” police wrote on Facebook.

Fishermen Jim Hohorst and Michael Ross located Ho, who was “conscious and alert but unable to stand, aboard and rendered aid for hypothermia,” police said. “I thought I was done,” Ho told Ross, according to Newsday. Hohorst added, “He was in shock and pretty incoherent at the time. We figured he had maybe an hour left. He was very hypothermic and said he had been drinking a lot of salt water.”

Ho was brought ashore to the Coast Guard Station on Fire Island, where he was treated by a Coast Guard medic and transferred to Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip, N.Y., authorities said. A spokesperson for Good Samaritan University Hospital did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Ho, who did not respond to a request for comment, told the New York Post he was released from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon and returned to his home in Copiague on Long Island. “I just want to get myself together, take a shower,” he said. “I am just trying to process everything.”

Rip currents are strong, narrow streams of water that flow away from the shoreline and can suddenly sweep swimmers out to sea. The National Weather Service has cautioned swimmers how rip currents “often form on calm sunny days.”

There have been 65 rip current deaths in the United States so far this year, according to the National Weather Service, ahead of the pace last year. All but two of the rip current deaths this year were men and boys, data show. The number of annual rip current deaths has steadily climbed since the National Weather Service began tracking them in 2010.

After a record of 130 deaths in 2021, the figure dipped to 85 last year. Rip currents were the third-leading cause of weather-related deaths from 2012 to 2021, behind only heat and flooding, according to the National Weather Service, and in a typical year they kill more people than lightning, hurricanes or tornadoes. Rip currents have also lead to rescues on beaches across the country this summer.

About 200 swimmers in Virginia and North Carolina had to be saved by lifeguards over the July Fourth weekend due to strong rip currents that pulled people into the Atlantic Ocean, the Associated Press reported. Lifeguards save at least 30,000 swimmers from rip currents each year, according to the U.S. Lifesaving Organization, a nonprofit association of beach lifeguards and water rescuers.

Ho went out swimming by himself at Cedar Beach in Babylon, N.Y., at around 5 a.m. Monday, according to police. He was not wearing a flotation device when he was pulled out more than two miles by a strong current, authorities said. The water temperature on Monday was around 68 degrees, Newsday reported.

As Hohorst and Ross were fishing for striped bass, they checked the water for bait when they saw the water moving and wondered what it was, according to an ABC affiliate in New York. That is when they saw the swimmer waving his makeshift flag at about 10 a.m. “He was just treading water, praying some boat would come by,” Ross told the station. “I can tell you, no boats in the area, not for miles.”

When the fishermen pulled Ho aboard their 2007 Albin Tropical Soul, his face was blue and his body was gray, Ross told the station. “He was shaking, totally hypothermic,” Ross added, saying they wrapped Ho in towels to warm up. Ross reiterated that Ho kept saying, “I thought I was a goner.”

A photo shared by the Suffolk County Police Department to social media shows Ho wrapped in a Mylar blanket while speaking to first responders. Ho told the New York Post that he was feeling “healthy” and “strong,” but that he was still recovering. “I am fine right now,” Ho said.

Although the men did not catch any striped bass on Monday, they have a story the men will be sharing for a while. They told the station they were lucky they were able to spot Ho before it was too late. “I just hope everything is good, and he is okay,” Hohorst said.