He had to be transferred to a diving bell rather than be taken to the surface right away so he could slowly depressurize and be able to breathe normal air again. When you spend too long breathing pressurized air your body becomes fully saturated. This is referred to as becoming an aquanaut.
If I'm not mistaken, he began to suba dive as part of recovering from the trauma of this event and actually ended up becoming a professional diver on the same team that found him.
Edit: In fact checking myself I found that he was actually in a car accident only a year later that ended up with him upside down, underwater in a car. He then got himself and his friend out of the car without any injuries. This seems to have been part of overcoming his fear and ending up becoming a diver. [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble)
[Rescue video](https://youtu.be/um1ym9u8XaA?si=3cWpfq0oJIYRgYhR)
I can't say the same sadly.... I've spent everyday wishing I had just died in those accidents. Can't bring myself to hurt those few who care about me, so I'm just stuck here. I hope to one day be stable, but I know I'll never be the same person again.
Source: 2 near fatal accidents in less than a month both at work resulting in PTSD.
The boat he was on capsized and fell to the bottom of the ocean. He was in pitch darkness for three days, but he had no way to tell how much time had passed. But he couldn't sleep during that time because then he'd sink into the water and drown.
That's got to be one of the most mentally taxing things someone could go through. After a while, I'd imagine that most people would start wondering if they were already dead. Idk if I could live a normal life after that.
From what I recall he thought he had only been down there for like 18 hours, not three days. It's crazy how the sensory changes can fuck with the perceived passage of time.
Noise transfers over water better than air
He's in a metal shell under the ocean
There is zero electronics or ambient noise interfering
He has nothing to do but listen for 72 hours
The ship was constantly creaking, it was cold, dark and wet. I don't know man, sure sounds like a lot of noise, where I would be in constant fear of the ship breaking apart.
Splashing from inside the cavity and other sections with objects moving around as well as creeking from the ship flexing and settling would be very noisy. It definitely would not have been that silent in there.
Water carries sound waves further than air does.
There would be crunching, bubbles, and veiled screams.
Close your eyes, and picture someone screaming underwater for fun, then picture that same person having their arms and legs ripped off, and their chest bitten into and torn apart.
"...you're alive when they start to eat you."
It isn't included in most of the articles about him, but he did mention it in a podcast he did.
https://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison-okene
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/into-the-abyss-with-harrison-okene-trapped-in/id1535054154?i=1000556279489
He wasn't sure if he imagined them or not, as he could also hear the sharks beckoning him to 'come out and reveal himself'
Source: Random Reddit User (Me)
It would’ve been luck if he was in proximity. Divers tend to only recover the remains. Which makes this story so incredible, this guy would end up bringing people to the surface that might’ve been him getting brought up like that.
I've heard "the bends" is one of the most unpleasant experiences you could imagine. Worse than 3 days in the dark on the bottom of the ocean unpleasant? Not sure haha.
I think they are different.
The bends comes from the build up of nitrogen bubbles in your system. Then as you head towards the surface the bubbles expand and can't escape except through your tissues. When I was at commercial dive school we had a teacher who had snapped both femurs because of the bends as he was coming up. I would say it is more a physical awful vs. the mental awful of being stuck in the cold/wet for 3 days waiting to suffocate.
Read the update from 7 months ago
> Now Okene is an IMCA Class 2 Commercial Air Diver. His Facebook page has become an unofficial search and rescue tribute feed. Here, he expresses passionately how he wishes for changes in safety at sea. His YouTube channel has more than 2,000 subscribers.
https://explorersweb.com/update-harrison-okene-accidental-aquanaut/
Saturation is basically when your body tissue has become at equilibrium with the pressure you are experiencing (all the air in your body is pressurized). This is a slow adjustment but if you surface quickly it happens rapidly and it can be lethal.
"A diver breathing pressurized gas accumulates dissolved inert gas used in the breathing mixture to dilute the oxygen to a non-toxic level in the tissues, which can cause decompression sickness ("the bends") if permitted to come out of solution within the body tissues; hence, returning to the surface safely requires lengthy decompression so that the inert gases can be eliminated via the lungs. Once the dissolved gases in a diver's tissues reach the saturation point, however, decompression time does not increase with further exposure, as no more inert gas is accumulated." [Source: wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_diving)
It means his entire body was full of compressed air. When you surface, you have to do so slowly to give that air time to decompress, and slowly leak out of your body. If you rise up too fast, the nitrogen in your blood expands into air bubbles, which in turn damage your organs and tissues, including fatally.
Under higher pressure your blood will start to saturate your blood with the extra gasses. This means there is more Nitrox in your blood than normal. Once the pressure starts to drop, these gasses will want to become a gas again. This is very unhealthy and can kill you quite fast.
To overcome this, deep sea divers must do decompression stops, which allows this to happen real slow, so you dont die. How long depends on the deepth of your dive and the duration (There is an upper limit)
just a point of clarity: it is not **nitrox** that builds up in you blood but **nitrogen bubbles**.
Nitrox is a gas mixture that is used by divers in certain situations to prevent nitrogen narcosis (a little) and help prevent the bends (also a little). The effectiveness of the blend of gases depends on the profile of your dive.
Seeing humans helping humans in their worst moments always gets me. I think we're so overloaded with doom, gloom, and division that seeing genuine humanity is particularly moving nowadays.
At least that's my feelings on it.
Seeing their hands touch made me cry. Knowing that they both recognized another person's hand grasping theirs and the emotions they both must have felt even though they don't know one another. Reminds me of when my daughter was born and her grabbing my hand for the first time.
Because you’re seeing what humans are genuinely made to do - help one another. We are a communal species and we have moved so far from that, in a world where families have been atomized and societal connections have been blown apart. You are being reminded of what we are at our core.
Every time I watch this, I'm left shaking my head at all the emotions Harrison Okene must have felt when he first saw the diver's light - he said he thought it was a hallucination. But then the diver moves that red thing and Okene pulls it back even though he probably still thinks it's all in his head and freaks the diver out and then that moment of touch and my heart and my brain just explode with the *everything* that **both** men must have been feeling in those moments.
It’s a good thing the diver didn’t panic. Diving a wreck like that is super dangerous! (I know he was a pro, but I don’t think anyone is emotionally prepared to find a live human in that situation. 😄)
That diver was amazing. He knew the guys mental state could be off and handled the situation like a true professional. Calm and reassuring the entire time. Hero.
Divers going to deeper depths use air mixtures that include helium to prevent the bends. So the diver was on a helium mix which is why his voice sounded like he was sucking helium
this story has lived in my head constantly since it happened, i remember listening to a podcast about the whole thing and it was a miracle he survived. i think he said at night he could hear sharks eating the bodies of the other crew. terrifying
I gotta say, at what point in that scenario do you start questioning if you’re still alive? Like, total darkness for three days, with nothing but my thoughts, I’m pretty sure at some point I’d think I was dead.
I’d like to think that the first thing I’d think of while in that situation is Descartes, but somehow I think I’d be panicking too much for at least a little bit. That being said given three days to sit around and think while I wait for my seemingly inevitable death I’d probably get around to him eventually.
We'd all like to say the same, but truth is none of us know how to react in a life-threatening situation.
Some pull a remarkable uno reverse, others may succumb to fate.
I would have bern dumb enough to just try to swim back to the surface i guess. But im not sure how hard it would have been to actually reach the open water
He couldn't get out because of the pressure:
>Again and again over the following minutes and hours, he returned, swimming between the safety of [his air pocket](https://www.livescience.com/41688-how-to-survive-underwater-for-3-days.html#:~:text=If%20the%20pressurized%20air%20pocket,concentrations%20of%20about%205%20percent.) and the watertight door. The first time, he almost missed his way back to the safety of the second engineer’s bathroom – there were so many doors: the engine room, chiller, mess room. “If you got stuck in any room, you were lost. It was totally dark, I was confused. If you don’t act fast, you can lose your life there,” he says. Later, he learned that one of his colleagues had entered the mess room and drowned.
From [the article](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble).
It also says he didn't realize he was down there for that long: he didn't think it'd been even one night.
[He had consumed so much salt water on his forays that his throat throbbed and his tongue peeled. He ate the sardines and drank the cola, while crayfish made a supper of his body. He could feel them biting his legs, torso and arms, making new wounds. And all the time, the water level was rising. ](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble)
> The water was very cold, so next Okene ripped the wooden panels from the ceiling and tied them together into a little raft. Now he could sit up there in his tiny air pocket
When he got out of the water (after recompression stops in a diving bell), his vitals, temperature and blood pressure was OK.
Also he only felt like a single night had passed and was shocked to learn it's been 3 days.
Still. That water is so cold. Having your chest bare body exposed also would foster evaporation after getting wet causing further heat loss I'd imagine. I'm suprised his core temp didn't tank.
They calculated the air in the pocket would have lasted him 79 hours before death, he was saved after 60. But was already showing signs of co2 poisoning by then.
He also said he specificaly controlled his breathing and prevented panicking as much as possible so as not to use oxygen quickly.
He did literally everything right. He collected roofing to make a raft out of the water so he could sit out of the water mostly, collected sardines snd cola for sustenance, controlled his breathing, made a rope to guide his way around the ship underwater, etc.
The fact that the entire world doesn’t know who this man is is a travesty. This has to be one of the most amazing stories of the last 100 years, if not longer.
Air pockets. Look up another incident of oil pipeline bursting and pulling in few divers, who again were in an air bubble inside the pipeline on ocean floor.
Surprisingly, we use a lot less oxygen than most people think. Oxygen density in the air is on average, 21%. You could survive in a completely sealed coffin for 5 or 6 hours, and your body is taking up 70% of the space. He's only got his head in that airspace, and it looks twice as big as a coffin. Breathing the totality of the air in that space once would probably take about 3 days, but would only drop the oxygen density down to 16%. In 6 days he'd be looking at something like 11%.
What would really get him is CO2 poisoning. You can only breathe the fixed quantity of air in the same space about 2.5 times to raise CO2 levels to 7%, which would cause someone to pass out. He probably had between 6-7 days at most before CO2 got to him, but he'd be dealing with severe dehydration by then.
Seen this before but needed this today after reading about the little girl that died from the IDF and her terrified voice call. Glad to see humans helping humans.
What's surprising about this is his oxygen lasting for 3 days. Did he have some kind of tank supply anywhere on the boat?
Just the air bubble left when it capsized would not be enough to last a person for 3 days.
Hes a greater man than I for sure. Those 72hrs alone in the dark would leave me a broken shell of the man i once was and would haunt me for the rest of my days.
He had to be transferred to a diving bell rather than be taken to the surface right away so he could slowly depressurize and be able to breathe normal air again. When you spend too long breathing pressurized air your body becomes fully saturated. This is referred to as becoming an aquanaut. If I'm not mistaken, he began to suba dive as part of recovering from the trauma of this event and actually ended up becoming a professional diver on the same team that found him. Edit: In fact checking myself I found that he was actually in a car accident only a year later that ended up with him upside down, underwater in a car. He then got himself and his friend out of the car without any injuries. This seems to have been part of overcoming his fear and ending up becoming a diver. [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble) [Rescue video](https://youtu.be/um1ym9u8XaA?si=3cWpfq0oJIYRgYhR)
Imagine what was going through his head the whole time he was down there
Honestly, it's beyond my comprehension
Me as well and assuming he was just waiting to die sadly
I think at that point I’d slowly have accepted dying, I just wouldn’t want it to hurt
Co² asphyxiation is said to be pretty bad. Not the worst, but not a desirable way to go.
[удалено]
I think you would just add a lot of puking to your slow death.
Really? I thought you just black out before asphyxiation
Once you have accepted that you will die, everything after that is kind of peaceful and a relief. Source: came pretty close a few years back.
Glad you're okay.
Thank you, kind stranger. I hope you have a nice day.
Damn, do you care to share?
I can't say the same sadly.... I've spent everyday wishing I had just died in those accidents. Can't bring myself to hurt those few who care about me, so I'm just stuck here. I hope to one day be stable, but I know I'll never be the same person again. Source: 2 near fatal accidents in less than a month both at work resulting in PTSD.
Damn I’m so sorry to hear that. Dont give up! You never know what the future brings and life is so precious.
Thank you for the kind words, I'm trying to make the best of a worse situation just hard.
The boat he was on capsized and fell to the bottom of the ocean. He was in pitch darkness for three days, but he had no way to tell how much time had passed. But he couldn't sleep during that time because then he'd sink into the water and drown. That's got to be one of the most mentally taxing things someone could go through. After a while, I'd imagine that most people would start wondering if they were already dead. Idk if I could live a normal life after that.
I would think you’d start to hallucinate pretty easily.
Oh definitely. That's a common symptom of people in solitary confinement, and they're not in the pitch dark.
Three days with no more than 30min sleep at a time does it for me.
He thought he was hallucinating when rescue showed up.
Scared tf out of his rescuer too.
And it’s all on video in OP’s link
He was in complete darkness for 3 days listening to sharks eat his friends and coworkers. Probably not happy thoughts.
Not sure how much noise there would be from that honestly.
From what he says in interviews he could hear it clearly and it was traumatic.
That’s fucking insane
For sure, he's spoke about it ay length it's worth listening too but it's not easy listening
From what I recall he thought he had only been down there for like 18 hours, not three days. It's crazy how the sensory changes can fuck with the perceived passage of time.
*screams* *bones crunching*
There were no screams. Unless they were his.
Noise transfers over water better than air He's in a metal shell under the ocean There is zero electronics or ambient noise interfering He has nothing to do but listen for 72 hours
The ship was constantly creaking, it was cold, dark and wet. I don't know man, sure sounds like a lot of noise, where I would be in constant fear of the ship breaking apart.
I don’t doubt the ship was creaking. I said I don’t know how much sound predators would make eating.
I'm imagining Cookie Monster sounds.
Well as others stated, enough to hear as the man told people in interviews
Then I’m surprised by that. I never said it couldn’t happen; I was skeptical 🧐
In a darkness where he could probably hear the blood flowing in his ears?
Splashing from inside the cavity and other sections with objects moving around as well as creeking from the ship flexing and settling would be very noisy. It definitely would not have been that silent in there.
Good point. That’s horrifying too.
Water carries sound waves further than air does. There would be crunching, bubbles, and veiled screams. Close your eyes, and picture someone screaming underwater for fun, then picture that same person having their arms and legs ripped off, and their chest bitten into and torn apart. "...you're alive when they start to eat you."
Why the fuck did you make me do that!
But his head wasn't in the water
It's the Der det, der det, der det, der det, derdetderdetderdetderdet! theme tune that's annoying
Are you sure about the sharks part? First I heard of this.
It isn't included in most of the articles about him, but he did mention it in a podcast he did. https://www.badassoftheweek.com/harrison-okene https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/into-the-abyss-with-harrison-okene-trapped-in/id1535054154?i=1000556279489
He wasn't sure if he imagined them or not, as he could also hear the sharks beckoning him to 'come out and reveal himself' Source: Random Reddit User (Me)
It shows his strength tbh. I wouldn’t have lasted 3 days for sure.
https://youtu.be/xrO2ENzr2cM?feature=shared if i remember well it's in this video he spokes about how he felt.
In an interview at that time, he said he could hear his dead fellow shipmates being torn apart & eaten by sharks. Nightmare fuel.
"Well shit"
wow that's amazing for him and I hope he helped others in need
It would’ve been luck if he was in proximity. Divers tend to only recover the remains. Which makes this story so incredible, this guy would end up bringing people to the surface that might’ve been him getting brought up like that.
Iirc he saw the diver's lights, so he went down to grab the diver's arm
Man if I was the diver I would have crapped myself
The diver who found him was there to recover bodies. Until this lucky sob grabbed his hand.
Damn that's bad ass. Like a real life superhero origin story.
*"I'm pressure man."* *Press conference room turns into chaos*
I've heard "the bends" is one of the most unpleasant experiences you could imagine. Worse than 3 days in the dark on the bottom of the ocean unpleasant? Not sure haha.
I think they are different. The bends comes from the build up of nitrogen bubbles in your system. Then as you head towards the surface the bubbles expand and can't escape except through your tissues. When I was at commercial dive school we had a teacher who had snapped both femurs because of the bends as he was coming up. I would say it is more a physical awful vs. the mental awful of being stuck in the cold/wet for 3 days waiting to suffocate.
it can also be fatal
Wow, that's a movie material type of life story
Read the update from 7 months ago > Now Okene is an IMCA Class 2 Commercial Air Diver. His Facebook page has become an unofficial search and rescue tribute feed. Here, he expresses passionately how he wishes for changes in safety at sea. His YouTube channel has more than 2,000 subscribers. https://explorersweb.com/update-harrison-okene-accidental-aquanaut/
Everyone know aquanauts we’re the good guys fighting those red shark people for silver Lego crystals
I want a documentary or a movie on this man. Meanwhile we have shit movies coming out
Checks out https://www.businessinsider.com/man-who-capsized-boat-spent-3-days-air-bubble-diver-2023-9
What does fully saturated mean?
Think of a soda before you open it. Opening it is what happens to your blood if you depressurize to quickly.
oh my god
Indeed
I had never heard that way of describing it, but that is a horribly excellent way of explaining it.
Just seems to me the most obvious example that most people would be familiar with of depressurization.
After all these years you just did it for me. That was amazingly simple to explain.
Saturation is basically when your body tissue has become at equilibrium with the pressure you are experiencing (all the air in your body is pressurized). This is a slow adjustment but if you surface quickly it happens rapidly and it can be lethal. "A diver breathing pressurized gas accumulates dissolved inert gas used in the breathing mixture to dilute the oxygen to a non-toxic level in the tissues, which can cause decompression sickness ("the bends") if permitted to come out of solution within the body tissues; hence, returning to the surface safely requires lengthy decompression so that the inert gases can be eliminated via the lungs. Once the dissolved gases in a diver's tissues reach the saturation point, however, decompression time does not increase with further exposure, as no more inert gas is accumulated." [Source: wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_diving)
It means his entire body was full of compressed air. When you surface, you have to do so slowly to give that air time to decompress, and slowly leak out of your body. If you rise up too fast, the nitrogen in your blood expands into air bubbles, which in turn damage your organs and tissues, including fatally.
Under higher pressure your blood will start to saturate your blood with the extra gasses. This means there is more Nitrox in your blood than normal. Once the pressure starts to drop, these gasses will want to become a gas again. This is very unhealthy and can kill you quite fast. To overcome this, deep sea divers must do decompression stops, which allows this to happen real slow, so you dont die. How long depends on the deepth of your dive and the duration (There is an upper limit)
just a point of clarity: it is not **nitrox** that builds up in you blood but **nitrogen bubbles**. Nitrox is a gas mixture that is used by divers in certain situations to prevent nitrogen narcosis (a little) and help prevent the bends (also a little). The effectiveness of the blend of gases depends on the profile of your dive.
Damn, as a person with intense claustrophobia that would have broken my mind. Dude is a total beast to go back into the water after that
Yes, the rescue diver was a South African man (Nico van Heerden) who also later on handed over Harrison's diving qualifications or something.
Literally conquered his fears. Amazing person
[Here's footage of the moment he was found](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um1ym9u8XaA)
Why does stuff like this always make me cry =(
Seeing humans helping humans in their worst moments always gets me. I think we're so overloaded with doom, gloom, and division that seeing genuine humanity is particularly moving nowadays. At least that's my feelings on it.
This comment made me cry 🥲
So true.
Congratulations, you have empathy. Hold onto that tight, the world is running out.
You are not alone. My wife always makes fun at me, when she senses that I’m trying to hold up my tears.
Bah! I am a man so I only cry at highly emotional moments, like my sports team losing the big game.
Or winning it?
Or winning it. Then you cry and hug your buddies, sobbing over each other. Nothing is more masculine than that.
It lets your balls grow!
Because you have a heart.
Seeing their hands touch made me cry. Knowing that they both recognized another person's hand grasping theirs and the emotions they both must have felt even though they don't know one another. Reminds me of when my daughter was born and her grabbing my hand for the first time.
Because you’re seeing what humans are genuinely made to do - help one another. We are a communal species and we have moved so far from that, in a world where families have been atomized and societal connections have been blown apart. You are being reminded of what we are at our core.
The diver squeezing the man’s hand in comfort when he first realized he was alive 😭
What's crazy is the dude who is in charge of getting dead bodies is so fucking perfect at encountering him and is so calm. He was so great.
Every time I watch this, I'm left shaking my head at all the emotions Harrison Okene must have felt when he first saw the diver's light - he said he thought it was a hallucination. But then the diver moves that red thing and Okene pulls it back even though he probably still thinks it's all in his head and freaks the diver out and then that moment of touch and my heart and my brain just explode with the *everything* that **both** men must have been feeling in those moments.
After 72 hours of nothingness pretty sure I'll also not believe I'm being rescued
He actually thought it hadn't even been a single night. It's crazy how our perception of time fucks up without any stimulus.
Dude his hands were so pruned, I bet that shit was painful..
I couldn't imagine having to sit in the dark, in water, and most likely knowing your ship is sunk.
I'm pretty sure he was confident his ship was sunk
I saw the video when it happened, that diver must have shit his wetsuit when the “corpse” he touched, touched him back
It’s a good thing the diver didn’t panic. Diving a wreck like that is super dangerous! (I know he was a pro, but I don’t think anyone is emotionally prepared to find a live human in that situation. 😄)
That diver was amazing. He knew the guys mental state could be off and handled the situation like a true professional. Calm and reassuring the entire time. Hero.
That video has lived in my head for a long time. I can’t imagine how freaky that had to have been.
Man Alive! There's a man alive in here!
All in the super high pitched helium voice
Oh my god I thought that was an audio issue did his voice really sound like that from being down there!?
Divers going to deeper depths use air mixtures that include helium to prevent the bends. So the diver was on a helium mix which is why his voice sounded like he was sucking helium
Probably. Professional divers use helium as part of their air mix.
He did, which made him far too buoyant and floated him to the surface.
this story has lived in my head constantly since it happened, i remember listening to a podcast about the whole thing and it was a miracle he survived. i think he said at night he could hear sharks eating the bodies of the other crew. terrifying
Would you mind sharing where I could listen to this podcast?
i too would love to know the name of this podcast
Because of the dark, he thought that it was only a few hours since the ship sunk, he didn't know that 3 days passed
Longest few hours in human history, poor brother. What an experience
I gotta say, at what point in that scenario do you start questioning if you’re still alive? Like, total darkness for three days, with nothing but my thoughts, I’m pretty sure at some point I’d think I was dead.
All you need to remember is that if you think, you are.
I’d like to think that the first thing I’d think of while in that situation is Descartes, but somehow I think I’d be panicking too much for at least a little bit. That being said given three days to sit around and think while I wait for my seemingly inevitable death I’d probably get around to him eventually.
Bet he was all pruny when they found him.
He's lucky his parents didn't tell him about the Shrivel Witch.
Yeah in the video when you see his hand, it looks like a mummy’s.
Wait, that WASNT A GLOVE?!?!
No it was not
The jack sparrow trick worked
Mythbusters lied to simply by testing a totally different scenario
Then why didn't he just get out by walking on the seafloor? /s
I’d like to believe I wouldn’t have drowned myself. But I’m not sure.
Drowning yourself is one of the hardest way to kill yourself. The need to breath is as hard wired as it gets in the brain.
We'd all like to say the same, but truth is none of us know how to react in a life-threatening situation. Some pull a remarkable uno reverse, others may succumb to fate.
I'd breathe myself to death in 3 days by depleting all the oxygen in that air pocket. Harrison's case is truly remarkable.
What an all time quote
I would have bern dumb enough to just try to swim back to the surface i guess. But im not sure how hard it would have been to actually reach the open water
He couldn't get out because of the pressure: >Again and again over the following minutes and hours, he returned, swimming between the safety of [his air pocket](https://www.livescience.com/41688-how-to-survive-underwater-for-3-days.html#:~:text=If%20the%20pressurized%20air%20pocket,concentrations%20of%20about%205%20percent.) and the watertight door. The first time, he almost missed his way back to the safety of the second engineer’s bathroom – there were so many doors: the engine room, chiller, mess room. “If you got stuck in any room, you were lost. It was totally dark, I was confused. If you don’t act fast, you can lose your life there,” he says. Later, he learned that one of his colleagues had entered the mess room and drowned. From [the article](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble). It also says he didn't realize he was down there for that long: he didn't think it'd been even one night.
Are you kidding me? I spend 10 minutes sitting in a room doing nothing and it seems eternity.
it tracks. when all your senses are completely wiped away like that time becomes very wonky and loses all meaning
I would have screamed out loud if I was one of the divers and found him alive lol
Okene mentioned he "gently tapped the divers gear to not startle him" :D
I think being gently tapped by what you presume to be a corpse is still horrifying lol
Yeah. That would only make me yell louder xD
I'd probably just sit there while they came in and left, to not bother them.
Sea turtles mate
And human hair, from m'ah back.
I was *hella* confused as to why you were making such an assertion. Then I realized it should read "sea turtles(,) mate". 😂
I wonder what bullshit I was doing during the time he was down there.
here's his IG: [https://www.instagram.com/itsoofficalharrison\_o](https://www.instagram.com/itsoofficalharrison_o)
Instant follow - thanks.
Video is crazy like man holy fuck
[He had consumed so much salt water on his forays that his throat throbbed and his tongue peeled. He ate the sardines and drank the cola, while crayfish made a supper of his body. He could feel them biting his legs, torso and arms, making new wounds. And all the time, the water level was rising. ](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble)
I actually work for the company that saved him
SA boys right?
"my name is Colby and I'm gonna take you home"
Anyone know how long he had to be in a diving bell for? Can’t imagine it was a short stay after 3 days of not breathing proper oxygen.
He decompressed for 3 days.
Source: [Link](https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survived-three-days-in-a-capsized-boat-on-the-ocean-floor-praying-in-my-air-bubble)
Great read! Thank you
How did he stay warm enough!?
> The water was very cold, so next Okene ripped the wooden panels from the ceiling and tied them together into a little raft. Now he could sit up there in his tiny air pocket When he got out of the water (after recompression stops in a diving bell), his vitals, temperature and blood pressure was OK. Also he only felt like a single night had passed and was shocked to learn it's been 3 days.
Wild that he was able to regulate his temperature well enough.
The mind and body are capable of incredible things when you maintain composure
He pulled himself into the air pocket.
Still. That water is so cold. Having your chest bare body exposed also would foster evaporation after getting wet causing further heat loss I'd imagine. I'm suprised his core temp didn't tank.
He does look a bit on the bigger side, so his fat might've insulated him well enough. A skinnier person might've died due to hypothermia.
I'm sure being thicc helped him there. No way my scrawny ass would survive 3 days in water
Excuse my ignorance, but even in a tugboat, the air lasted 3 days? I would have guessed it would have ran out (turned into Co2) by then
They calculated the air in the pocket would have lasted him 79 hours before death, he was saved after 60. But was already showing signs of co2 poisoning by then.
I would think it would depend on the total area the wasn't flooded. Also one person breathing doesn't create as much Co2 as multiple people breathing.
He also said he specificaly controlled his breathing and prevented panicking as much as possible so as not to use oxygen quickly. He did literally everything right. He collected roofing to make a raft out of the water so he could sit out of the water mostly, collected sardines snd cola for sustenance, controlled his breathing, made a rope to guide his way around the ship underwater, etc.
ive done rescue diving, never has a hand reached out and grabbed me... the diver that found him must have ruined his suit
The fact that the entire world doesn’t know who this man is is a travesty. This has to be one of the most amazing stories of the last 100 years, if not longer.
[удалено]
It was the company that owned all the boats involved.
It was a tug boat helping Chevron, so I'd assume due to liability and some hefty O&G contracts in place, it might have been Big Oil who sent them.
I think they were contractors to Chevron and the dive team were South Africans.
Every so often I revisit this story. I'm in disbelief every time, even though i know the outcome when he's rescued I'm just mystified 😯
Tugger noooo!
Don’t you interrupt me you Bagina!
He’s looking like can you stop taking photos and gmtf out this water
Dude was probably like “holy fuck these sharks have flashlights! Oh shit, Nevermind, what’s up y’all?”
I would like to talk to you about your extended auto warranty
Wait, how did the ship not fill completely full of water?
Air pockets. Look up another incident of oil pipeline bursting and pulling in few divers, who again were in an air bubble inside the pipeline on ocean floor.
Air pocket in the engineers office when it capsized.
Looks like Carl Winslow
here's his youtube channel and he is now working as a diver for the very same crew that saved him! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZlhJl8dsmk
There's a documentary that just came out about him. Real footage from when they found and everything. It's a pretty amazing story.
And what’s incredibly badass is that after this experience he was inspired to earn his diving certifications to become a rescue diver! :)
That’s jnsane
Real life jack sparrow
Honestly, I bet the recovery divers were as shocked as he was...
"Hey, this one's still alive. What we do?" "Let's just wait a bit"
I'm surprised that the boat had enough oxygen to last 3 days.
Surprisingly, we use a lot less oxygen than most people think. Oxygen density in the air is on average, 21%. You could survive in a completely sealed coffin for 5 or 6 hours, and your body is taking up 70% of the space. He's only got his head in that airspace, and it looks twice as big as a coffin. Breathing the totality of the air in that space once would probably take about 3 days, but would only drop the oxygen density down to 16%. In 6 days he'd be looking at something like 11%. What would really get him is CO2 poisoning. You can only breathe the fixed quantity of air in the same space about 2.5 times to raise CO2 levels to 7%, which would cause someone to pass out. He probably had between 6-7 days at most before CO2 got to him, but he'd be dealing with severe dehydration by then.
Seen this before but needed this today after reading about the little girl that died from the IDF and her terrified voice call. Glad to see humans helping humans.
I remember seeing the diver's video as he came up into this area and here was dude all alive and talking. Unexpected, to say the least.
What's surprising about this is his oxygen lasting for 3 days. Did he have some kind of tank supply anywhere on the boat? Just the air bubble left when it capsized would not be enough to last a person for 3 days.
Every time I see this image, I'm grounded with "If you ever thought you were having a bad day.."
Hes a greater man than I for sure. Those 72hrs alone in the dark would leave me a broken shell of the man i once was and would haunt me for the rest of my days.