A CALIFORNIA man had a brush with death after falling from his boat into the Pacific Ocean, at night last month, but survived after a harbor seal assisted his five-hour swim back to safety, according to reports Wednesday. Scott Thompson, a sea urchin diver, was stranded in the Santa Barbara Channel in the middle of the night after he fell from his boat while its motor was still running, the Mirror reported. With no sight of the shore, which was miles away, and only wearing a T-shirt and shorts in the chilly coastal waters, Thompson faced a despairing situation. “I thought to myself, great, this is how I’m going to die,” the boater said, according to the report. “Today is the day I’m going to die.” As Thompson attempted to catch the boat, he soon realized it was outpacing him, he told the outlet. “That’s when I realized, like, okay, we got problems,” Thompson said. “And I just started swimming as hard as I could, towards the boat, and it really didn’t take too long to realize like, it’s getting farther, I’m not getting closer.” Thompson immediately thought of his family and was motivated to return home to his wife and two children. “Just keep swimming, you gotta get home to your family. I was devastating myself, through my mind, just picturing my girls and my son growing up without me, and my wife, you know, not having a husband to support her,” Thompson said. He planned to swim to an oil platform, which was closer than the shore, and soon received help from the marine mammal, he explained. “I wasn’t thinking about sharks or anything like that, until I hear this splash. It was a medium-sized harbor seal,” Thompson said. “The seal would go underwater and he came up and nudged me, like a dog comes up and nudges your leg.” Crew members aboard the oil platform treated Thompson, who was then taken to a hospital. (SD-Agencies) | 