GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (AP) — Out of air and pinned by an alligator to the bottom of the Cooper River in South Carolina, Will Georgitis decided his only chance to survive might be to lose his arm.

The alligator had fixed his jaws around Georgitis’ arm and after he tried to escape by stabbing it with the screwdriver he uses to pry fossilized shark teeth off the riverbed, the gator shook the diver and dragged him 50 feet (15 meters) down, Georgitis told The Post and Courier.

“I knew I was going to die right then and there,” he told the Charleston newspaper.

The alligator attacked Georgitis on April 15 as he surfaced from his dive, nearly out of air. His tank emptied with the gator’s jaws crushing the arm he put up in defense. Georgitis figured he had one last chance.

“I put my feet up against him just launched back as hard as I possibly could and somehow ripped my arm out and not off,” Georgitis told ABC’s Good Morning America.