Trapped 100ft Underwater: 60 Hours in pitch Black Darkness

[00:00:00]On May 25th, 2013, a tugboat named Jascon 4, carrying a crew of 12, was sailing through calm waters off the coast of Nigeria. The crew's mission was to secure and stabilize a gasoline tanker [music] in the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:00:15]For those who don't know, a tugboat is simply a type of vessel designed to maneuver larger ships by pushing [music] or towing them. After spending the entire day at sea, the exhausted crew members [music] went to their cabins to rest when night fell. Because ships in the area were frequently attacked by pirates, everyone's [music] cabin door was locked for security. What they didn't know at the time was that this safety precaution would ultimately lead to the end of their lives.

[00:00:43]>> [music] >> While the vessel was about 32 km offshore, all 12 crew members were asleep. Although no storm had been forecast that day, a violent storm suddenly struck. The ship battled the dangerous waves [music] for a while, but in the end, it was overwhelmed by the massive swells. At around 4:30 a.m. on May 26th, it began sinking rapidly.

[00:01:08]Worse still, it was capsizing. [music] The ship's cook, Harrison Okene, had woken up early that morning to prepare breakfast. [music] When the vessel rolled over and started sinking, he was in the bathroom. Inside that tiny room, he experienced the first moments of the disaster when he heard the [music] screams of the others. He realized the ship was going down. As he tried to open the bathroom door to escape, >> [music] >> the toilet broke loose because the ship had flipped upside down and slammed into his head. A few seconds after realizing blood was pouring from the wound, all the power went out. Everything instantly [music] became pitch black. Meanwhile, the ship was rapidly descending into the depths of the ocean. As the bathroom began filling with water, Harrison [music] froze in panic, not knowing what to do.

[00:01:53]Suddenly, the bathroom door flew open.

[00:01:56]As he stepped into the hallway, he was swept away by the powerful current rushing through the ship. [music] He tried calling out to his friends for help, but no one could help him. Most of them had locked their cabin doors before going to sleep [music] and were now trapped inside as the water rushed in.

[00:02:12]Harrison watched in horror as three of his [music] co-workers managed to open their cabin doors and reach the hallway, only to be literally lifted off their feet and swallowed by the raging water.

[00:02:22]He knew they were going to die.

[00:02:26]As he himself was tossed violently through the flooding ship, he suddenly found himself inside another bathroom connected to the engineer's cabin. The door slammed shut behind him as he was swept inside. The water level continued rising, but it didn't completely fill the room. By pure luck, there was a small pocket of trapped air inside. That tiny air pocket provided the oxygen he needed and kept him from drowning for the time [music] being. His body had been battered against walls and equipment as the current threw him around, leaving him bruised and exhausted. [music] As he tried to catch his breath, an even more violent impact shook the room. The ship had finally [music] come to rest on the ocean floor, 31 m below the surface.

[00:03:08]At that point, Harrison heard voices outside.

[00:03:11]>> [music] >> His co-workers were crying and calling for help. Everything had happened so suddenly. This wasn't a struggle that would last for hours. It was a desperate [music] fight for survival that unfolded in only a matter of moments. After a while, the voices [music] disappeared completely.

[00:03:29]Although Harrison realized the room he was in was probably the [music] safest place to stay, he soon faced a horrifying reality. He was trapped alone in complete darkness. The only sounds were the eerie groaning of the wreck [music] and the silence surrounding him.

[00:03:44]Nearly naked, with no food, no fresh water, and surrounded by freezing cold water, his chances of surviving with nothing but that small air pocket seemed almost impossible. The longer he remained there, the more carbon dioxide would build up inside the air pocket with every breath he took. Eventually, the oxygen would run out and he would suffocate. Immediately [music] after the ship capsized, a rescue operation was launched. A team of divers quickly located [music] the overturned vessel and descended to determine whether anyone could still be [music] rescued.

[00:04:19]But because the doors were locked and they lacked the necessary equipment, [music] they were unable to enter the wreck. When Harrison heard them outside, he began banging on the walls of the ship to reveal [music] his location. No one heard him. In reality, the rescue team hadn't been prepared to stay at that depth for very long. After a brief search, they assumed all 12 crew members were dead >> [music] >> and reluctantly returned to the surface.

[00:04:44]As a result, Harrison was unable to make anyone hear him and he had no idea when or if anyone would ever come back. There was nothing he could do except think about the terrible situation he was trapped in. Although he didn't know what had happened to his friends, he assumed some of them might have escaped. What he didn't know was that everyone except him was already dead.

[00:05:09]After surviving the first terrifying day, the oxygen inside [music] Harrison's air pocket was nearly exhausted. If he stayed there any longer, suffocation was inevitable. At that point, he saw the locked exit door as his best chance at freedom. He decided to act, but first he had to get out of the bathroom. As he tried to open the door, he accidentally broke the handle. From that moment on, he developed a strange sense of calm. After noticing an air vent, he broke the steel great covering it [music] and used a piece of the metal to force the door open. When he finally entered the engineer's [music] cabin, he found two small flashlights and a life jacket. He placed one flashlight in his mouth and tucked the other into his shorts before swimming toward the exit door. But, there were no other air pockets in the flooded corridors. He simply didn't have enough breath to spend [music] trying to force the door open.

[00:06:02]So, he was forced to return to the [music] air pocket inside the bathroom where he had started. Over the next minutes and hours, he repeated the same thing over and over [music] again. He would take a deep breath from the air pocket in the bathroom, swim to the door, try to open it, [music] and then return to the bathroom for air. At one point, because there were so many doors along the corridor, he even nearly lost track of [music] which direction the bathroom was in. Entering the wrong room would have meant drowning to death. So, Harrison returned [music] to the air pocket one final time and decided to stay there. Among the things he found to survive during those repeated attempts were a can of fish and a bottle of cola.

[00:06:44]While he ate the fish and drank the cola, crayfish had turned his body into a meal. He could feel them biting his legs, torso, and arms, and opening wounds in his skin. He had also swallowed a large amount of salt water while swimming back and forth between the bathroom and the door. His throat was burning, and the skin on his [music] tongue was peeling. When the flashlights he had found died a short time later, Harrison was once again left in [music] complete darkness. But now, he had a much more serious problem than the dark.

[00:07:16]The water at the bottom of the ocean was extremely cold, and he was freezing. At that depth, the water temperature could lower body temperature to fatal levels within hours or even minutes. So, he used a few items he found around him and stacked two mattresses on top of each other, creating [music] a simple platform that kept part of his body out of the water and helped delay the onset of hypothermia. Since he had no choice but to wait for someone to come, he stayed there and prayed as [music] much as he could, asking God to reunite him with his family. It was only a few days before [music] his fifth wedding anniversary. He looked back on his life and thought about his wife, his family, his friends, and what would happen to them if he died. Then, in the complete darkness and silence, he found himself in a strange [music] place that felt beyond ordinary human existence.

[00:08:11]>> [music] >> It was as if Harrison had slipped into a parallel universe. The only thing he could feel [music] was time passing, along with the occasional muffled rumble of ships moving across the ocean 31 m above him. The second day passed with no progress at all, and then the third day arrived. Exhausted from sleepless nights, Harrison was growing weaker, and things were getting [music] even worse.

[00:08:35]His skin had begun peeling from being submerged in [music] salt water for so long, and the pain was becoming unbearable. On top of that, his thirst had become extreme. At one point, he began hearing strange sounds and realized they were sharks that had come to feed on the bodies of his dead crewmates. He believed that when his turn came, he would probably be eaten alive as well. As his strength [music] continued to fade, he finally lost all hope of getting out alive and began waiting for death. By then, about 60 hours had passed [music] since the sinking. While Harrison was enduring conditions far worse than anything I've described, [music] a new rescue team was assembled above the wreck. This time, it was a much larger and better equipped [music] team of divers, but they were not diving with the hope of finding a survivor. The divers were simply supposed to bring up any bodies [music] they found. However, Harrison was still alive. After noticing a beam of light coming through a hole in the wreck, he began hearing sounds again. With renewed hope, he started banging on the side of the ship as [music] hard as he could to let them know he was alive. Unfortunately, the divers were too far away, and after a while, he heard the sounds [music] begin to fade. A little later, he saw a diver swimming through the corridor where he was trapped. Once again, it seemed [music] that no one had seen him. Just as he thought he had failed to make himself heard for a second [music] time, one of the divers, Nicho Heard, noticed a hand waving toward him. When Nicho reached out and grabbed the hand, he was shocked to feel [music] it squeeze back.

[00:10:12]The footage is truly unbelievable. The team had entered the wreck expecting to find only bodies, and instead, they had discovered [music] a living person.

[00:10:22]Nicho shouted to the rest of the team that someone was alive. Still holding tightly onto Harrison's hand, [music] he swam up through the water and into the air pocket. And there, finally appearing on the diver's camera, Harrison's expression was a mixture of complete exhaustion, relief, and disbelief.

[00:10:41][music] He slowly shook his head from side to side, then leaned back, too weak to even sit upright. The moment he stood up and came face to face with his rescuer, [music] he broke down in tears.

[00:10:54]Once the entire team had gathered around him, the very first thing he asked for was water. After drinking an entire bottle in one go, it finally [music] looked like there was a way out for him.

[00:11:05]But they couldn't simply bring him straight to the surface. That would take hours. Harrison was struggling [music] to breathe. The oxygen inside the air pocket he had been trapped in had gradually been replaced by carbon dioxide, and he was slowly suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning. If they didn't get him out soon, he would most likely die within a few hours. Since the divers had never expected to find anyone alive, they hadn't brought any spare air tanks. The support team immediately rushed to deliver a new tank as quickly as possible. In the meantime, the other divers kept talking to Harrison non-stop to keep him awake [music] and prevent him from losing consciousness.

[00:11:45]>> Okay, listen to me.

[00:11:47]You're going to be putting the headset on so you can breathe, okay?

[00:11:50]All right, now you mustn't panic, hey?

[00:11:53]You must listen to me, all right?

[00:11:55]All right.

[00:11:56]We're going to take you in the water and we're going to take you to the bell, okay?

[00:12:02]And then we're going to bring you home, okay?

[00:12:05]All right. What's your name?

[00:12:09]Harrison?

[00:12:10]Okay, Harrison. My name is Paulbie.

[00:12:15]Again, I'm going to bring you home, okay?

[00:12:18]>> After a while, the air tank arrived, but even if that problem was solved, another one remained. After spending so many days at that depth, his body had absorbed an enormous amount of nitrogen, putting him at risk of decompression sickness, a deadly condition caused by nitrogen bubbles forming in the bloodstream. Even for a healthy person, diving at that depth is extremely dangerous. Harrison's body had already been pushed to its limits after 3 days of physical suffering, and it might not survive the ascent. On top of that, the excitement and stress could have dangerously increased his blood pressure, but he had no other choice, and he was determined to try, no matter what. To prevent a sudden death, the rescue team had to bring him to the surface extremely slowly, making multiple decompression stops along the way, so the trapped gases could leave his body gradually. It was a delicate and time-consuming process, but Harrison's life depended on it. To maintain the proper internal pressure and reduce the risk of decompression sickness, they dressed him in a specialized diving suit and fitted him with a helmet equipped with a breathing apparatus. They then carefully guided him out of the wreck and into a diving bell that would carry him safely to the surface. Although the rescue operation started well, Harrison lost consciousness at one point. Thanks to the divers efforts, however, he survived and finally reached the surface after nearly 3 hours. After his historic fight for survival, Harrison was placed inside a specialized hyperbaric chamber where he was given plenty of food, water, and medication. He remained there for 3 days until his vital signs returned to normal. If he had been exposed to normal air immediately, he most likely would have died. Inside the chamber, he experienced several trauma responses, including nightmares and an insatiable hunger. But in the end, he made it through. The young man who had escaped from the depths was finally reunited with his family. Once he was safely back on land, the first thing Harrison asked was how long he had been trapped. When they told him it had been 3 days, he was shocked. He thought he had only been down there for about 12 hours. After recovering from the initial shock, he asked about his friends. When he learned that they had all died, he couldn't hold back his tears. The man who had fought so bravely against death finally broke down and sobbed uncontrollably. The bodies of 10 of the other 11 crew members were eventually recovered. One crew member remained missing and was never found. So, how did this man survive for 3 days in conditions that should have killed him? The air pocket Harrison was trapped inside was estimated to be about 1.2 m high. An average person requires roughly 10 cubic meters of air per day. That means Harrison would have needed around 25 cubic meters of air to survive for 60 hours, far more than the space he was trapped in. However, the because the wreck was under the immense pressure of the ocean floor, scientists estimate [music] that the air pocket was compressed to about four times its normal density. As a result, it effectively contained around six cubic meters of breathable air, enough oxygen to keep Harrison alive for approximately 60 hours.

[00:15:45]Another danger was carbon dioxide, which becomes deadly when it reaches a concentration of about 5%. [music] As Harrison breathed, he consumed oxygen and released carbon dioxide, >> [music] >> causing the gas level inside the small air pocket to rise steadily. [music] Fortunately, carbon dioxide dissolves into water. Every time Harrison moved in and out of the water, he unknowingly stirred it, allowing more carbon dioxide to be absorbed. Without realizing it, he reduced the concentration of a carbon dioxide enough to keep it below the fatal 5% threshold. Science helps us understand and explain the world around us, even in the most unexpected and extreme situations. Spending 60 hours trapped in the darkness of the ocean is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable, especially when there's absolutely no way to escape.

[00:16:42]Surviving that long at such a depth is nothing short of extraordinary. Under normal circumstances, recreational divers can only stay [music] at those depths for about 20 minutes. After everything Harrison went through, he earned the extraordinary distinction of being the only known person to survive after spending nearly three days trapped on the ocean floor. The trauma stayed with him for some time. Even though he had plenty to eat, he constantly felt hungry. He also woke up in the middle of the night believing his bed was sinking beneath him. Because of [music] this, he swore he would never go near the ocean again. But over time, despite everything he had endured, he overcame [music] his fear. Inspired by the men who had saved his life, he decided to train as a diver. In [clears throat] 2015, he became a certified commercial diver, so he could help rescue people facing the same life-threatening situations at sea.

[00:17:39]Remarkably, the person who handed him his certification was the very diver who had rescued him. Harrison's story is an extraordinary combination of incredible luck and remarkable resilience. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed the video, please don't forget to subscribe and leave a like. See you in the next video.