A man on board a boat woke up at the crack of dawn to go
to the restroom, sleepily walking around in his boxers.
Once in the small room, his world literally flipped
upside down as extreme turbulence rocked the boat,
turning everything pitch black as it capsized.
The man could feel water gushing into the ship—scared for his life,
he stumbled to find any escape or safety, but only found locked doors.
As the boat sank and settled at the bottom of the ocean, he miraculously
managed to find the single tiny pocket of safety in the entire vessel.
His life was saved by a couple of mattresses, a bathroom, and a
bottle of coke, but how much longer could he survive down there?
One spring day, the Jascon-4, a tugboat,
set sail off the coast of Nigeria.
The boat’s mission was to secure a large Chevron oil
tanker full of gasoline, which was in the Atlantic Ocean.
The 12 crew members aboard had several years of
experience at sea, and this was a routine task.
But nothing could prepare the men of the
Jascon-4 for what they were going to meet.
The crew of eleven Nigerian men and their Ukrainian captain
locked their cabin doors and turned in for the night.
As they slept, heavy rain, dangerous waves,
and turbulent black waters surrounded them.
Around 4:30 AM, Harrison Okene, the cook on board,
woke up before everyone else to prepare breakfast.
Harrison was an experienced seaman who
loved getting a headstart on his day.
First things first, he made his way to the restroom.
At the moment, a huge wave slammed into
the ship and turned it over, capsizing it.
The force threw Harrison out of the washroom and tumbled him
around the ship, as water poured into its halls and cabins.
The vessel began sinking faster and faster, down into the sea.
Terrified and in the pitch dark, Harrison groped around trying to
find safety, but all the doors around him were locked from the inside.
This was a practice to protect the ship’s passengers and content,
since pirates were known to raid the boats in the region.
As they sank down, 30 miles away from the Nigerian coast, the cook
managed to find his way to the ship officer’s cabins, which was
unlocked, but flooded with water, forcing him into a small attached room
inside the cabin that must have been the officer’s attached washroom.
There, a miracle happened.
As the boat settled at the bottom of the sea, 30 metres below the
surface, an air bubble formed in that tiny washroom with Harrison in it.
The pocket of precious air was only about one meter
wide, but it was enough to keep someone alive… for now.
As he sat stuck in the dark, Harrison had nothing
to do but to think about this dire situation.
The fate of his crew mates was unknown, but Harrison
assumed they had managed to evacuate to safety, and
perhaps thought he had perished in the disaster.
He was alone, and not sure if anyone was
coming, or if they would come too late.
The water level was also slowly rising.
but he was determined to survive as long as he could.
He left his air pocket to search for supplies, wandering and feeling
around the ship, and managed to find some tools and two mattresses.
He stacked them on top of each other, rigging a simple
platform that kept his body partially out of the
water and to delay the possibility of hypothermia.
Still, it was almost unbearably cold, and
Harrison was wearing nothing but underwear.
It was pure black and noisy all around him.
He was hungry and thirsty, with only a
bottle of coke he had found to survive on.
He knew he had to get out as soon as possible—the longer he waited,
the more his air pocket was becoming concentrated with carbon dioxide
from his breathing, and eventually he would not be able to survive.
He tried to find a way out of the chamber, using
a rope he found to find his way back to the air
pocket during his attempts, but was unsuccessful.
With no other options, he stayed there,
shivering, and prayed and prayed.
He was only days away from his five-year wedding anniversary.
He reflected on his life and thought about his wife,
his family, his friends, and what would happen to them.
Two days passed without any progress, and
Harrison wasn’t sure that help was even coming.
At one point, he heard what he believed were the sounds
of biting, a creature eating something in the boat.
He was running out of time—every breath he breathed out was filling
his space with more and more CO2, which would eventually take his life.
Was anyone going to look for him?
Meanwhile, above the surface, a team of South African divers
from a nearby oil rig were sent to inspect the scene of
the shipwreck, but this operation was not a rescue mission.
They were from DCN, a global diving company, and
had been sent to recover the bodies from the wreck.
Since all the doors to the rooms were locked as a safety precaution
against pirates, they had been told that all the boat crew
members had lost their lives as they were locked in their rooms.
Four bodies had already been retrieved from the water,
and Harrison’s family were notified of his passing.
Nobody had any idea that someone was praying for
them to hurry and find him before it was too late.
If Harrison was still alive, he would have heard the sounds
of the crew reaching the shipwreck 60 hours after the sinking.
The humming of a boat’s engine, an anchor dropping, and the paddling
of divers would have alerted him that divers were on the way.
But the Jascon-4 was a large ship, and since the divers
weren’t looking for someone trapped on board, it could
take them a long time to reach the small chamber.
Harrison was still alive.
He had heard the sounds of potential rescue,
and was trying to get their attention.
He used a hammer to hit the steel of the boat, trying to make enough
noise to alert someone to the fact that he was alive in there.
The divers were far from him, though,
and he heard their sounds fade away.
As the divers explored the vessel, hoping to find the remaining bodies,
one man, Nico van Heerden, made his way into the officer’s cabin.
He moved around the space and found the washroom,
his light piercing through the black water to
where little did he know, Harrison was waiting.
His time had been running out for over the last two days, so Harrison
took no chances and jumped into the water towards his potential rescuer.
He reached out to touch the diver’s head, careful
to withdraw quickly and not scare him too much.
Nico was shocked.
He stretched out towards the hand he had felt and Harrison grabbed it.
Nico cried out to his team that a person was alive, and he
held on to Harrison’s hand to let him know help was here.
When he rose up to see his savior face to face,
Harrison started crying with joy, disbelief, and
gratitude, overwhelmed that someone had finally come.
Rescue had arrived at a critical moment, because Harrison's air pocket
was becoming concentrated with carbon dioxide from his breathing and he
would not have been able to survive much longer, and was in the first
stages of hypercapnia, a buildup of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream.
The air bubble had kept Harrison alive, but being
trapped in there for so long also put his life at risk.
He had breathed in a dangerous amount of nitrogen, and the
effects on his body from being underwater for so long were severe.
When we breathe air, the body takes in the oxygen, replaces some
of it with carbon dioxide and does nothing with the nitrogen.
At regular surface pressure, some nitrogen and oxygen
is dissolved in the fluid in our blood and tissues.
But when a scuba diver goes deep underwater, the pressure on the body
increases, so more nitrogen and oxygen dissolve in the bloodstream.
The oxygen is used by our tissues, but the nitrogen
forms nitrogen bubbles in their bloodstream.
If a diver were to go straight up to the surface, that gas
would be released, just like when you open a bottle of soda.
This can be extremely painful and fatal.
To prevent this, divers have to rise from the water
slowly and make many decompression stops along the
way, which allows the gas to come out bit by bit.
If the diver goes up too fast, the only cure is to go into a
pressurized chamber where the air pressure matches the pressure
underwater, then is released slowly while the diver adapts.
Though Harrison had been found, the danger was far from over
for him as he had to be returned to the surface very carefully.
Simply bringing him straight to land would have
killed him, as Harrison would experience this
severe decompression sickness, known as “the bends”.
How did Harrison stay alive for so long within such a limited space?
People are still not sure how the pocket of air
had formed, or how it sustained him for so long.
It’s believed that the trapped air pocket had miraculously
worked as a sort of “diving bell”, which is a chamber with an
open bottom, used to transport divers to and from the surface.
The pressure of the water around keeps the air trapped inside the bell.
If you’ve ever placed a cup or something similar upside
down in a pool or bath, you’ve seen this phenomenon at work.
Still, wouldn’t Harrison have run out of air quicker?
One theory as to how he survived concerns Fick's Law of Diffusion.
This is a scientific rule that says that the movement of a substance
from one area to another is affected by the difference in concentration
of that substance and the space through which it is moving.
It's a complex scientific concept, but in simple terms,
it's a rule that explains how things move from one place
to another based on the concentration and space available.
In this case, the air pocket Harrison found in the submerged
boat may have been created by the air diffusing from the upper
parts of the boat to the lower parts where he was trapped.
The high concentration of air in the upper parts of the boat
created a flow that allowed the air to reach the washroom.
It's possible that this flow of air helped
him survive while trapped underwater.
It's a theory, but the law of diffusion can
explain how the oxygen reached Harrison.
Alex Gibbs, a life support technician on duty at the surface,
was alerted to the fact that someone was miraculously alive.
He and his team put down an air hose into the room and
gave Harrison fresh air, but there was another problem.
Harrison had been so saturated by carbon dioxide air that the divers had
to switch to a mix of oxygen and helium, which is not standard practice.
Harrison was fitted into a special diving suit and helmet,
which would maintain his internal pressure to prevent
the bends, but he had spent so long underwater that
he still had to make several long decompression stops.
Nico was amazed at how calm the survivor was the entire time.
As they brought him up little by little,
Harrison passed out, but survived.
At the surface, he was transferred to a diving
bell under pressure, then a decompression chamber.
He spent the next two days there, which
was also an ordeal to live through.
Harrison had recurring nightmares of his experience, suffered from his
skin peeling, and a hunger that wouldn’t go away even after being fed.
He also learned that none of his crew members had survived,
10 bodies had been recovered, but one was never found.
Alex cared for Harrison throughout his recovery, delivering food,
changing his sheets, administering medicine, and communicating
between Harrison and the doctors, officers, and managers outside.
It took three days before he was decompressed
and well enough to leave the chamber.
Harrison was very grateful to be alive, but was prone to
nightmares and would wake up in the night feeling his bed sinking.
He swore to never go near the ocean again.
Nine years after this incredible event, Alex was on a diving job
when he met one of the divers and got an unexpected surprise.
It was Harrison, who was now working as a commercial diver.
Though he had initially been terrified of going into
the water, traumatized by his near-death experience
in the ocean, Harrison had bravely conquered his fear
and decided to become a certified commercial diver.
When Harrison completed his training, it was
Nico who had presented him with his diploma.
Harrison said that he is happy as a clam while diving
and enjoys the environment, it’s now fun for him.
He feels like the ocean is his world, and he
is comfortable and relaxed while in the sea.
He can dive up to 50 meters underwater.
He is forever grateful to the team that saved him and will never forget
the two days he spent trapped in the dark, cold depths of the ocean.
Harrison has some advice for people who find themselves in a
terrifying situation like he did: the fear alone can kill you,
but he believed in himself and kept his faith and his mind strong.
This unbelievable accident-turned-miracle serves as a
reminder of the dangers of working at sea and the importance
of safety measures to address a variety of situations.
Harrison's story of survival is a testament to his will to
live and the power of hope to face seemingly impossible odds.
It’s also amazing that he managed to overcome his
fear and pass all his diving courses, considering
that his grades were probably below sea-level.
Based on our recent video about scientists bringing potentially pandemic
causing zombie viruses back to life, we put a poll on Twitter asking,
"is research done in pathogen labs are worth the risk of lab leaks?".
Most of you said yes!
And for all of our sake...
I hope you're right.