"I felt a slimy texture brush my face," he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white. "I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop ...

The Venezuelan kayaker had been paddling through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile's Patagonian coast, with his father when he felt something "hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me".