Story of survival.

Last month, Aaron Schwartzman and Brayden Bowers were rescued by fellow fishermen after a near-death boating accident 17 miles off the coast of San Diego.

Aaron owned the boat that went down, and had taken his friends out for a day of fishing before the boat sank and left them stranded in the water for 3 1/2 hours.

They were eventually rescued by two fellow local fishermen who came across their boat thinking it was debris.

Now, Aaron stopped by the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast for a candid conversation with Joe Amabile about this scary experience.

Aaron said, “The fact that they drove to what they thought was debris in the water is the only reason I’m right here. That is the only reason. Three and a half hours, man. I maybe had two hours left before something healthwise happened.”

He went on, “There were also some massive great white sharks out there, huge like submarines that could just swallow you whole. There’s just so much going through your head when you’re out there. I’ll always remember getting in that boat and feeling this immense feeling of gratitude and thankfulness. It definitely changed my perspective on life completely.”

The Bachelor Nation star opened up about how his life has been changed by this near-death experience.

He said, “Majority of people in this world have not had a true life-or-death scenario. I have been unfortunate enough to have that at work, but not to this magnitude. At work, I can get out of life-or-death situations through training. I rely on my training and the guys behind me on my crew. When you’re in a situation like this, helpless with no help coming, no cell phones, no radio, no nothing, it’s a whole new mindset.”

Aaron went on, sharing, “That definitely reset some of the things I’m going to do going forward and how I look at family and friends. We overlook a lot of things and take things for granted. Life is really just an unstable deck of cards that we expect to be upright every time we wake up. When one of those cards falls, your entire stack can fall. We take that for granted all the time, so it’s just the little things.”

Joe asked how this experience changed his bond with Brayden, who was alongside him through it all.

Aaron said, “Brayden and I were bonded before this even happened. We became best friends right off ‘The Bachelorette.’ The day we came home, we became brothers. If anything, this is another one of those pages in our book of friendship that binds our book even tighter than it already was. The one thing I’m thankful for is that I didn’t really know Brayden’s family that well, and now, after this event, I am so close with them. I was just at a winery with his aunt and his mom. They call me their adopted son. There’s always a silver lining to something that’s dark and scary.”

Hear more of Aaron’s story on the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below.