Okene was working as a ship's cook off the coast of Nigeria and was in the bathroom when a wave hit his ship and overturned it.
Few people have conquered fear like Harrison Okene did nearly a decade ago. The Nigerian man was the lone survivor of the Jascon-4 tugboat, which sank 100 feet after being overturned by a wave. Miraculously, Okene was rescued from the ship’s debris, and a dramatic clip of his recovery was shared on social media.
The tragedy occurred in May 2013 when Okene was working as a cook on the ship off the coast of Nigeria. He was in the bathroom when a wave hit, overturning the boat and sending it 100 feet below the surface. The disaster claimed the lives of all the crew members except Okene. After almost three days, divers sent to retrieve bodies came across a strange sight – a hand reaching out from the depths.
A video of the rescue, shared by the BBC on Facebook, showed the dramatic moment when divers found Okene. The opening moments of the clip show a pale, floating hand that the diver initially assumed belonged to a dead body. "We found one, yeah," the diver said. Suddenly, the team of divers discovered life in the trailing hand, with one exclaiming, "He's alive! He's alive!"
Soon, they found Okene sitting in a pocket of space, surrounded by debris. A diver said, "Hold him there, just keep him there — reassure him, just pat him on the shoulder." In the end, the rescue team safely strapped an oxygen mask on the man's face to bring him back to the surface.
It has been over a decade since Okene miraculously survived the maritime disaster. Soon after the Jascon-4 tragedy, he decided to take diving classes and enrolled in a three-month diving course in 2015. He said, "I have faced a lot of my fears in my life, and I decided to face this once and for all." He said he wanted to overcome his fear of water, "I know it should be my fear, but I don’t need to be scared of water. Because I need to embrace my fear once and for all and be strong. Our happiness, our joy, our future – they are all in our hands. I had to reprogramme my thinking. I balanced my mind," as per The Guardian.
Remember this guy (Harrison Okene) a cook who got trapped on the seafloor at 30m for three days, just learned he went on to become a commercial saturation diver trained by the man who rescued him pic.twitter.com/8w2LrEjbXS
— ThePeoplesElbow (@Idris_Elbow_) February 3, 2024
Today, Okene is a full-time diver who has confronted his fear of water. As a professional, he makes underwater repairs on oil and gas facilities and can dive to a depth of 165 feet.
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