Eerie footage released today, Dec. 3, reveals the dramatic and unlikely rescue of a man at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean who was found alive by deep-sea divers, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The rescued man, Harrison Okene, was a 29-year-old cook on a tugboat that capsized off the coast of Nigeria back in May. His 11 crewmates did not survive the sinking, swallowed by the swells of the sea, but he was able to stay alive for nearly three days by finding a small air pocket as refuge in upturned boats at depths that would kill most experienced divers.
"All around me was just black, and noisy," Okene told the Guardian. "I was crying and calling on Jesus to rescue me. I prayed so hard. I was so hungry and thirsty and cold, and I was just praying to see some kind of light."
Okene was wearing nothing more than shorts when the divers discovered him. In the video footage, they are heard calling out, "He's alive! He's alive!" upon discovering the shivering man.
Paul MacDonald, one of the officers involved in the rescue, recalled to the Guardian his astonishment at Okene's air pocket sustaining him for so long. "How it wasn't full of water is anyone's guess. I would say someone was looking after him," he told the newspaper.
"To survive that long at that depth is phenomenal. Normally you would dive recreationally for no more than 20 minutes at those depths," a training consultant from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors told the Guardian.
Okene plans to write a book about his experience. After being taken to the surface, he spent two days in a decompression chamber, his body having absorbed fatal amounts of nitrogen.
Click here to see the dramatic footage from Harrison Okene's rescue.
