This was the rescue of a missing man on a Carnival cruise 0:56
(CNN) --
An Alabama man pulled from the Gulf of Mexico by rescuers hours after he was reported missing from a cruise ship doesn't know how he ended up in the water, he told ABC.
James Michael Grimes, who was in the water for much of Thanksgiving before being rescued, has no recollection of falling off the Carnival Valor, he said in an interview broadcast Friday on "Good Morning America."
The 28-year-old had lost consciousness and simply woke up in the water, he said.
"I came to. ... I was in the water with no boat in sight," Grimes told ABC.
A man disappeared from a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico.
What happened next could very well be a "Thanksgiving miracle"
Grimes and her family had only been on a cruise ship for a few hours, leaving New Orleans for Mexico on Thanksgiving Eve, when she collapsed.
His eventual rescue, which came after a cargo ship crew spotted him in the water and alerted the US Coast Guard, was "one of those Thanksgiving miracles," an official said. of the coast guard
Grimes was at a bar on board with her sister before going to the bathroom around 11 p.m. the night before Thanksgiving, her sister recalled, according to a Carnival statement to CNN.
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James Michael Grimes, 28, spoke to ABC in an interview that aired Friday morning.
Credit: ABC News
He had been drinking at the Valor, but he wasn't drunk, Grimes told ABC.
He doesn't remember going out looking for a bathroom, he said.
He simply "gained consciousness" in the ocean, with the Valor nowhere in sight, he told ABC.
For the next few hours -- perhaps more than 15, according to the Coast Guard -- Grimes tried to stay afloat and was "determined to get out of there," he told ABC.
"I never accepted that this was the way it was, that it was the end of my life," he told the television network.
"It scared me... all I could see was a fin"
The man fought confusion, exhaustion, and some kind of creature below.
"It came at me really fast. I went under and I could see it. And it wasn't a shark, I don't think. But it had more of a flat mouth, and it came up and hit one of my legs, and I kicked it with the other leg. It scared me. , not knowing what it was... all I could see was a fin," he told ABC.
At another point, Grimes grabbed a floating stick that "looked like bamboo" and started chewing on it.
"It tasted like something other than salt water to me," he told ABC.
As night began to fall on Thanksgiving Day, the water "started to get colder. At that point, I thought, you know, 'How much longer am I going to have to be out here?'" he said.
Grimes's family had reported her missing at noon on Thanksgiving Day.
The ship called the Coast Guard that same afternoon, and the service sent an alert to all Gulf sailors to search the water for it.
The water temperature in the Gulf was about 70 degrees Fahrenheit on Thanksgiving night, USCG search and rescue coordinator Lt. Seth Gross told CNN last week.
Grimes ended up seeing the lights of a tanker, and swam towards it, he told ABC.
The crew of that boat saw it around 8:25 p.m. and alerted the Coast Guard, which sent a helicopter crew to lift it out of the water, the service has said.
"The first thing I said (to the Coast Guard rescuer) was, 'I don't have any clothes,' because I didn't. I took everything off," Grimes recalled to ABC.
"He said, 'Okay'... I was just thinking, 'Thank you. You're like a guardian angel coming for me.'"
Grimes was taken to medical personnel at a New Orleans airport, and later transferred to a hospital.
Grimes lost some weight from the ordeal, ABC reported.
He said the experience changed him, but he's not opposed to going on another cruise.
"I might not go within ten feet of the rail, but I would definitely be willing to go on another cruise, because I really couldn't go on this one," he told ABC.
Andi Babineau and Tina Burnside contributed to this reporting.