When the sun rose, Mohamed, a lanky 27-year-old sitting in a dinghy on the Mediterranean Sea, saw the awful truth. All around him, waves swung in sickening time, and there was no land in sight. Packed in with some 50 fellow migrants from his home country of Syria, Mohamed had been tossed by the sea for hours in an inflatable raft meant to hold half as many people. The boats engine had fallen off during the night, and they were drifting.

Mohamed, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, reached for his smartphone, one of a pair he had received as a gift from a cousin who suggested he pawn them for cash. The iPhone 5 was wrapped in layers of resealable plastic, Mohameds attempt at waterproofing. He now saw something miraculous: a row of dots on the upper left side of its face. Somehow, in the churn of waves, the phone was catching a signal.

It was late August 2015. Mohameds fellow migrants in the boat werent getting a signal. His good luck was a quirk of telecommunication strategizing. After buying a small power bank for remote charging in Damascus, Mohamed purchased an Internet plan from phone company Turkcell in Izmir, Turkey -- one of several cities he passed through on his journey out of Syria. A Turkcell phone can typically work on the water even if it's as far as 50 kilometers, or approximately 31 miles, from the closest cell tower, a company representative told The Huffington Post.

At the time he first found coverage, Mohamed felt adrift in a wasteland. In fact, he was only 4 miles from mainland Turkey.

Data coverage is a lifeline for migrants. Though aid workers stemming the crisis of Syrian migration are yet to officially classify it as such, technology has been recognized by those on the ground as a necessity on par with food and warm clothing. Migrants need phones to help navigate between bus stations once they reach land, aid workers say.

Paul Donohoe, press manager at the International Rescue Committee, said the mobile phone has also become a fundamental tool in surviving the harrowing water-crossing from Turkey to Greece, which has claimed almost 3,000 lives in 2015 alone, according to the U.N. Human Rights Council. (Some half a million migrants have tried their luck this year, by the same study.) Donohoe, who recently traveled to Lesbos, said Greek coast guard employees have been overwhelmed with calls from migrants stranded at sea and using the communication service WhatsApp.

Having a phone with a camera can mean the difference between life and death. One migrant Donohoe interviewed told an extraordinary story of calling the coast guard from the water. He was told to take a photo proving that they were on a boat, Donohoe said. Theres an expectation of interaction.

Apps To The Rescue

With night behind him, Mohamed felt both bolder and more desperate. He thought to use Maps.me, a geolocator that works offline. While the apps reviews on iTunes are mostly written by honeymooners and other pleasure seekers traveling off the beaten path, perhaps its biggest beneficiaries today are Syrians and Afghans fleeing their countries. According to Mohamed, the apps coordinate feature, which enables a user to derive his exact latitude and longitude anywhere in the world, has proven critical for migrants hes met walking the path to German salvation.

On that Thursday morning, Mohamed opened up his browser on the phone. All around him people slept, the smell of vomit overwhelming the boat as waves banged its walls. Mohamed was starting to feel dizzy. The anti-nausea pill hed taken, a gift from the only other friend he had on board beside his brother -- a Syrian pediatrician named Khaled At -- was wearing off. The doctor, who spoke to HuffPost by phone from Germany, confirmed how seasick everyone had become, with most passengers felled by dehydration. At himself was acutely seasick. He remembers few details from the journey, beyond crying at various points, sure he might never again see his parents and sisters.

Using screenshots provided by Mohamed and his cousin, the Huffington Post recreated their actual conversation at sea, below.

Mohameds plan was extreme: Figure out his exact location and call the Greek police for help, or failing that, the Turkish police to surrender. Jail, he reasoned, was better than death. But when he pulled up a browser to find the numbers, it wouldnt load. He opened Facebook and found his feed as normal looking as if he were in Damascus. He posted a message on his wall, saying only that he was stuck somewhere between Turkey and Greece. For the next eight minutes he relentlessly shared coordinates derived through Maps.me, posting them on the wall of a private Facebook group only for Syrian migrants, with some 18,000 members. He updated his own wall with the SOS every minute.

Formerly a deejay in Damascus, Mohamed had made friends from all over the world, some of whom were awake by now. A few liked his statuses. Soon dozens were posting underneath them, limiting themselves mostly to the Arabic phrase Allah yusulmak -- May god keep you in peace. Mohamed hoped for more. He reasoned that a call placed by a third party to Greek or Turkish officials might well lead to a rescue, given that he could provide coordinates. At 8:08 a.m., he wrote a private message to three cousins in America: a string of coordinates and the English word Help. A minute later he messaged his coordinates separately to his cousin Danya Kathleen, a half-Syrian living in Hawaii whom he had met in person only once but whose kindness had made an impression.

He tried Facebooks phone tool and was amazed to hear a ring at his ear. No response from Danya. It was 13 hours behind in Hawaii, 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. He sent another message to the group of cousins, including Danya and her brother Omar Yasseen in Washington, D.C. Both cousins are referred to here by their first and middle names to protect the familys identity.

Heeeeeeeeeelp, Mohameds text to them read. Ten letter Es.

A willowy 28-year-old with deep dimples and hair the color of sand, Danya looks like an ad for the good life in Hawaii. While Mohamed messaged her, she was trying on bikinis at the Rip Curl boutique off Waikikis main drag. When she happened to glance at her phone in the dressing room, she suddenly felt a million miles away.