Video Emerges Of Nigerian Man Who Survived 3 Days At Bottom Of Atlantic ocean

Call him a survivor or the resilient man everyone is talking
about. In what has been described as an incredible feat, a
team of South African divers, including at least four from
Durban, has rescued Harrison Okene who spent almost
three days in an air bubble – 30m under the sea – after the
tugboat he was on capsized off the coast of Nigeria.
had just got up when the ship rolled. He was able to get
himself into an air bubble just 1.5m by 3m, where he
perched on a table to keep himself alive, drinking
softdrinks out of cans that were floating around him.
According to the owners of the boat, West Africa Ventures,
the vessel capsized, but did not sink to the bottom. It
floated 30m below the surface, with Okene trapped inside.
The vessel had been towing a tanker to a mooring buoy on
May 26 when it was flipped by heavy swells.
The South African divers were on a different expedition on
the West Coast of Africa when they responded to a May
Day call. A 100km away the Chevron-chartered tugboat,
AHT Jascon 4, had capsized. It was 27km off Escaros in the
oil rich Delta state of Nigeria.
What was meant to be a body recovery mission for the
South African divers turned into an underwater rescue
when, after 60 hours alone in the wreck, Okene grabbed a
diver as he swam past, having earlier failed to attract the
attention of the first diver down.
Divers were shocked to have found Okene alive and said
they were amazed by how calm he was during the rescue.
Because he had been 30m underwater his body had filled
with nitrogen and divers had to put him into a
decompression helmet before he could be safely brought
to the surface.
Okene’s incredible feat and the divers’ effort to bring him
to the surface safely has caught the attention of maritime
experts and international film-makers who want to turn
the rescue into a documentary.
Writing on the Facebook page of a maritime website, Paul
McDonald, a “dynamic positioning officer” on board the
dive support vessel involved with the recovery and rescue
mission, said: “All on board could not believe how cool he
was when being rescued. The divers put a diving helmet
and harness on to him and he followed the diver to the
bell where he was then taken to deck level and kept in the
chamber and decompressed for 2 days. It was amazing to
be part of this rescue and my sympathy is with the families
who lost (their) loved ones.”
Rob Almeida, an accomplished sailor and partner at
gCaptain, in an article written for the company’s website,
had spoken to former US Navy Salvage Officer Patrick
Keenan about the amazing rescue
“The fact this person survived is incredible,” commented
Keenan. “After spending two days at 30 meters of depth,
he had become saturated, meaning his body had absorbed
all the pressurised gases and equalised with the
surrounding water pressure. Bringing him to surface from
that depth, and after having been saturated at 3 or 4
atmospheres, could easily have killed him.” In saturation
diving, divers are brought to the surface from depth using
a pressurised diving bell, which mates up to a pressurised
chamber on deck. This allows the “saturated” divers to live
and work above and below the surface at a steady
pressure state for an indefinite period of time, and most
importantly, to be brought to the surface safely,” Keenan
wrote.