Carnival passenger James Grimes reveals how he survived 20 hours overboard

The Alabama man who fell off a Carnival cruise ship and miraculously survived nearly 20 hours treading water says he fought off what he feared was a shark and ate floating bamboo as he desperately tried to stay afloat.

James Michael Grimes told ABC News on Friday that he has no idea how he fell off the Carnival Valor ship and plunged into the shark-infested waters of the Gulf of Mexico the night of Nov. 23.

The 28-year-old couldn’t recall how many drinks he had in the lead-up but denied being drunk, insisting the last thing he remembered was winning an air-guitar contest in one of the ship lounges.

“The next thing I know … I regained consciousness. I was in the water with no boat in sight,” Grimes said.

As he was treading the choppy waters clinging to hope that he would be rescued, Grimes recalled being approached by a huge creature he initially thought was a shark.

“I was swimming in one direction, and I looked around, and I seen it out of the corner of my eye,” Grime said. “It came up on me really quick, and I went under.

“It wasn’t a shark, I don’t believe. It had more like a flat mouth and came up and bumped 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.”

At one point, Grime said a stick came floating by that looked like bamboo.

“So I started eating on it and it actually, I won’t say it tasted good, but it gave some type of flavor in my mouth other than salt water,” he said.

Grimes insists he never lost hope that he would be rescued, saying, “My worst fear is drowning, and that’s something I didn’t want to face.”

“I wanted to see my family, and I was dead set on making it out of there. I was never accepting that this is it, this is going to be the end of my life. I’m 28 years old. I’m too young. This is not going to be it,” he continued.

Grimes, who was on the five-day Thanksgiving cruise with 18 family members, was reported missing by his sister about 12 hours after he left the ship’s bar to use the bathroom and failed to return.

It prompted the Cozumel, Mexico-bound vessel to retrace its path toward New Orleans and the US Coast Guard to launch a frantic search.

Grimes was eventually spotted by a cargo ship, and dramatic video showed him being plucked from the ocean by the Coast Guard — about 20 miles south of Louisiana’s Southwest Pass.

His rescuers believe he was moments away from perishing in the water given the hypothermia, shock and dehydration he was suffering from.

“The fall didn’t kill me, sea creatures didn’t eat me — I felt like I was meant to get out of there,” Grimes said.

It still isn’t clear how Grimes ended up overboard, but the US Coast Guard appeared to suggest he may have breached the cruise ship’s safety barriers.

“Cruise ships have safety barriers in all public areas that are regulated by US Coast Guard standards that prevent a guest from falling off,” the agency said in a statement.

“Guests should never ever climb up on the rails. The only way to go overboard is to purposefully climb up and over the safety barriers.”