When a Speeding Boat Severed His Arm, This Diver Fought to Survive

Reader’s Digest Canada published a very detailed story on Carter’s injuries and recovery.

Find the story here.

After a speeding boat nearly killed Carter Viss, he vowed to work with the driver to make sure it never happens again.

Beneath the ocean’s surface waits a different world—quiet, full of wonder, shimmering with life. Carter Viss loved that world. It’s why he left Colorado to study marine biology at Palm Beach Atlantic University. It’s why he got a job at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, just up Highway 1 on Florida’s east coast. And it’s why he spent so much free time snorkelling in the reef system just a couple hundred metres from the famous Breakers resort in Palm Beach.

This particular Thursday morning— November 28, 2019—was especially nice. It was Thanksgiving. Tourists and locals alike hit the beaches. The water was flat, the sky blue and the underwater visibility spectacular. Twenty-five-year-old Viss and his 32-year-old co-worker, Andy Earl, spent a couple of hours among the sharks, eels, turtles, octopus, lionfish and angelfish. They netted some small specimens for Viss’s personal collection. Finally, around noon, they headed for shore. To a diver underwater, outboard engines have a clear, unmistakable sound. On the surface, however, swimming the crawl, Viss didn’t hear the powerboat until it was almost on top of him. When he saw it, he knew he had just an instant. He pulled desperately to one side, getting his head and upper torso out of the boat’s path before it ran him over. He braced and tumbled. The seawater around him turned crimson. A severed limb was sinking to the bottom—a human arm, the hand enclosed in a black diver’s glove. This couldn’t be happening, he thought. It was too bizarre.

I’ve got a long road ahead of me, but I’m gonna make it.

Carter Viss

Founder of Carter Viss Foundation

Read the full the story here.