The Ocean is a huge and terrifying place! More than 80% of the world's oceans are still unexplored, and this means that if you go missing at sea, you'll most likely sink down to an area that no one has ever been to before.
Boats and people still go missing all the time out there, and even planes that crash in the ocean are usually never found. Very rarely do people that go missing out there ever return back to the land, but there is one person who did. He is probably both the luckiest and the unluckiest person that has ever lived.
Back in 2013, Harrison Odjegba Okene from Nigeria was working as a cook on a tugboat called Jascon-4. The boat was sent out on a mission to stabilize a Chevron oil tanker about 32 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. That night the weather was extremely bad and they were working in very rough seas.
While towing back the oil tanker, at about 4:30 in the morning, a huge wave hits the Jascon-4, which snaps their cable to the tanker and flips the boat upside down! The boat begins to rapidly sink and panic set in for the 12 crew members on board.
Most of them at the time of the accident were locked inside their cabins, as a safety precaution against getting raided by pirates! But luckily for Okene, he had just left his cabin to go to the bathroom. He got tossed around inside, before the tiny room began filling up with water. He forced the door open and saw several of his friends slide through the hallway and get swept into the ocean.
Okene got pushed out of the bathroom and went sliding down the hallway as well. He managed to grab hold of another bathroom door opening, where he held on, until the boat hit the ocean floor at a depth of 30 meters!
The bathroom was now completely filled up with water, and Okene who was already suffering from the extremely cold water temperatures, swam underwater in complete darkness in search of air.
Using his hands to feel ahead of him, he somehow was able to find another room that had an air pocket. Here he decided to stay put, but being in a cold wet room with no food or fresh water, and with a rapidly diminishing oxygen supply, his odds of survival didn't look good. And to make things worse, sharks had begun to investigate the wreck!
In his small pocket, Okene was able to find a couple of cans of coke, which prevented him from becoming dehydrated. He also found a mattress that he used to lift his chest and head above the cold water, and this prevented the onset of hypothermia. If it wasn't for this, the cold water alone would have probably killed him within hours!
But his biggest problem was the tiny pocket running out of oxygen. Based on the size of the pocket and the pressure that it was under, he only had about 60 hours of air. Another danger to him was actually breathing out too much carbon dioxide, which could have poisoned him. Luckily for Okene, carbon dioxide is easily absorbed by water, and by moving and splashing the water around him, he was actually saving his own life!
But now he was trapped in a small space, alone, half in cold water, in the dark, with little hope of survival. To make things even more horrifying, Okene had to listen to the sounds of sharks getting in and feasting on the corpses of his friends!
Okene endured all of this for about 60 frightening hours, hoping to be rescued. His air was almost up, and within just an hour or two of suffocating, he finally heard the sounds of knocking. Unknown to him, Chevron had sent a team of divers to investigate the wreck and recover any bodies. The divers didn't actually expect to find anyone alive, and weren't even looking for survivors.
Okene began desperately banging on the walls, hoping that they would hear him, but they never did. When he finally saw the light from one of the divers inside the boat, he knew his time to act had come. He swam towards the light and grabbed the arm of one of the divers, who probably got the biggest shock of his live!
He had finally been found, but the danger wasn't over yet. After being under the ocean for so long, a rapid ascent back to the surface would have most likely given him a heart attack and killed him!
The divers gave him a diving helmet and placed him inside a diving bell, they then raised him out of the water back to the surface. Here he still had to spend two more days decompressing before he was finally safe!
Sadly, Okene still suffers from nightmares because of the incident, and has sworn to never return to the ocean ever again.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this survival story!