an exciting rescue story for you this morning a couple of bay area divers counting their blessings today they ended up drifting too far out to sea but thanks to a lionfish safari help was not too far away babies 9's josh spoke to one of the divers and a rescuer this photo shows 48 year old rob litke holding up a lionfish he caught on saturday but shortly before this picture was taken litki had become unattached from his buoy and was drifting out to sea and when i rose to the surface that's when i realized uh my boat was nowhere to be seen and uh you know no matter how trained you are and i'm trained to handle a situation like that i have um over 100 dives that's a little unnerving luckily for litki and another diver 31 year old james sailors the pinellas county sheriff's office dive team was participating in the lionfish roundup and spotted litke waiting for help in the water sergeant glenn wilson says litkey's boat was a mile away and the captain had no clue as divers had become unattached that's because the captain was staying with the marker like he was supposed to do so as we approached the vessel we asked the captain if he was missing any divers he replied he was not that they were both down under his boat that rescue happened about 30 miles out in the gulf west of this location here at johns pass the pinellas dive team still ended up catching 70 lionfish and won a prize for the biggest one caught but sergeant wilson says rescuing was more satisfying a lot of our dives don't have happy endings you know we we get at the tail end of some type of tragedy and rarely do we get to be involved in an actual rescue which is everybody felt really great i was really grateful that they were out there doing the lionfish derby also and they picked me up and brought me over to my boat vicki says the rescue happened so fast he never had to use his safety equipment in pinellas county josh rojas bay news 9. the pinellas dive team says it uses the lionfish safari roundup contest to train their members lionfish derbies are the only control method at this time to get the invasive species out of the gulf