TV Crew Accidentally Rescues an IRL Cast Away From a Deserted Island

In a story almost too surreal to be true, Animal Planet's River Monsters crew was surveying the water near Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria for plane crash ruins when they came across a fisherman on a deserted island who'd been separated by his boat and was "prepared to die," the show's director Stephen Shearman told InsideEdition.com. He'd been stranded for 60 hours in 110-degree heat and "had said his last prayer."

"Together, we spotted this blue Esky, or cooler box, that was just sat on the rock," Shearman said. The crew hadn't originally planned to shoot near the island but switched locations when choppy waters forced them to move from their planned spot. Shearman and his team started making jokes about how funny it would be to see a Cast Away-type person when all of a sudden, "This guy with no clothes was running out of the cave, waving his arms out." 

The crew immediately gave him several bottles of water because he was severely dehydrated and then sent him for medical attention. The fisherman's name turned out to be Tremine and he'd been out fishing when he decided to leave his boat to find better oysters, PEOPLE reports.​

On his way back to the boat, Tremine suffered from a sunstroke and couldn't go any further. The next morning, it was too hot for him to move and he was stuck. Tremine reportedly has no family or children, so no one knew he was missing, but he is now — "apart from a bruised pride" — totally back to normal.

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