Footage shows of the incredible moment a diver came across a man who had been stranded at the bottom of the ocean for two and a half days after his ship sunk.
Harrison Okene was the sole survivor of a ship called Jascon-4, a vessel purposed to stabilize an oil tanker, carrying 12 workers that came into trouble in the early hours of one morning back in 2013.
The then 29-year-old was onboard working as a chef when he woke up before his shift to use the toilet – in nothing but his boxers – at which point, a huge wave crashed into the tugboat, flipping it upside down.
Harrison Okene spent 60 hours in the tiny air chamber (DNC Diving)
While in the bathroom, Okene noticed water was starting to creep in, which is not something you’d like to see while on a ship.
After hurrying out, he then came across a number of his colleagues as they battled to tie down the boat’s hatch while the water inside continued to rise, The Guardian reports – at this point, he decided to make his way to the exit.
Sure enough, the unforgiving ocean forced its way in, and the current pushed him away from the exit further into the vessel into another toilet in the second engineer’s cabin.
Fortunately for Okene, the bathroom was the only room in the boat to have an air pocket inside, which was actually the floor. However, he was forced to cling to the base of the washbasin to keep his head there below the ceiling.
Because of this, he managed to survive for 60 hours on the seabed of the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean, located around 20 miles off the coast Nigeria.
He still attempted to make a break for the exit, but ended up breaking the door handle. He told The Guardian: “But I told myself, instead of panicking, you have to think of a way out.
“The air couldn’t go out of the boat completely. Some had to be trapped inside.”
Okene later managed to find two mattresses – stacking them on top of each other – so that he was able to stay above the rising water in his tiny little bathroom chamber.
“I tried to kill the fear in front of me,” he said. “Because one thing that can kill you fast is fear. That panic that comes at you, it kills you before your real death comes.
“Because the moment you start panicking, you use too much oxygen.”
Okene defied all odds and miraculously survived (DCN Diving)
After around 60 hours, with no food or water, and with minimal air remaining in his chamber, it started to look hopeless but to Okene’s delight, a diving crew appeared – with the mission initially just being to recover the bodies of those onboard.
To their surprise – and likely initial terror – a hand was waving at them after Okene spotted their head lights and swam out to flag for their attention.
After being rescued, he was then taken from the divers’ bell to a recompression chamber where he would be forced to spend a further three days, given that he’d have died if he returned straight to the surface.
“Everything was normal. My temperature, blood pressure. I thought, that’s not normal,” he later explained.
You’d think after that, he’d never go near the ocean again, however, he ended up working as a diver.
He added that the incident had ‘changed his life in so many ways’.
A woman who spent 35 hours trapped in an air pocket of a sunken boat has opened up about how she accepted her life was going to end.
Lucianna Galetta was one of 46 people on board the Sea Story diving boat when it set off from Egypt’s Red Sea coast in November 2024, ready for a six-day trip featuring multiple dives.
Those on board consisted of 31 international guests, three diving instructors and 12 Egyptian crew members, but on the first day of the trip, passengers were woken in the middle of the night as the boat suddenly capsized.
Lucianna Galetta and her partner were trapped in an air pocket (BBC News)
Egyptian officials have said the incident was caused by a huge wave that struck the boat, though Dr Simon Boxall, a leading oceanographer from the University of Southampton, cast doubt on that theory when he analyzed the weather and claimed there was ‘no way a 4m (13ft) wave could have occurred in that region, at that time’, BBC News reports.
Survivors of the sinking have suggested that furniture on the top deck of the boat may have shifted in the waves, potentially causing the vessel to become unstable.
Whatever the cause, there was no escaping the fact that water was rushing in on board.
Lucianna, who was one of the survivors of the ordeal, wasn’t able to make it to the top deck like some of her fellow passengers who jumped from the boat as it started to sink.
“There was already water in the corridor so it was impossible to go out,” she recalled in an interview with BBC News. “We tried, I think we panicked, and we didn’t really realize that the boat was upside down.”
As they struggled to get out, Lucianna and her partner, Christophe Lemmens, ended up in an air pocket in the boat’s engine room, which was left sticking out of the water as the boat sank.
Lucianna caught footage of the rising water on the boat (BBC News)
She continued: “We jumped and almost drowned, and then we appeared in this air pocket.”
Lucianna has shared footage she managed to capture while on board, showing belongings floating around in the rising water and blocking the exit she and Christophe might have hoped to use to escape.
Before long, the couple were joined by one of the dive instructors, Youssef al-Faramawy, in the air pocket, and the three had no choice but to sit and wait, hoping for help to arrive.
In her interview, Lucianna admitted: “I was ready to die to be honest.”
Sadly, up to 11 people who were on the Sea Story when it sank died, or are still missing.
“It’s very weird to be alive compared to the others. I was more ready to die than to be alive and living like this now,” Lucianna said.
Survivors of the sinking told BBC News the Sea Story sank between 2am-3am, but a distress signal was not received by local authorities until about 5:30am.
Rescuers arrived about eight hours after the boat first capsized, but from their position in the air pocket, Lucianna and her companions had no idea what was going on.
“We heard this helicopter after eight hours, at this point we were very happy… but then after we needed to wait 27 hours more. We had had no communication with the outside, nothing. No one tried to see if there was someone alive in there,” Lucianna recalled.
“I was just wondering how I would prefer to die,” she said, weighing up her options of attempting to get out herself, or potentially be left in the air pocket.
Eventually, a local diving instructor was able to locate the three survivors and lead them to safety.
“We are lucky to be alive but there are so many people who didn’t come back from this, and I want their families to be able to grieve,” Lucianna added.
Survivors of the Sea Story dive boat disaster have shared their terrifying memories of being trapped in the pitch black for 35 hours after their vessel sank.
The ordeal took place in November 2024 after the luxury dive boat set off from Egypt’s Red Sea coast with 31 international guests, three diving instructors and 12 Egyptian crew members on board.
The trip was set to last six days, and passenger Lucianna Galetta remembered the boat being ‘really nice’, ‘very big’ and ‘very clean’.
Lucianna is one of a few survivors who spoke about the tragedy with BBC News, with those on board remembering the boat seemed more unstable than they would have expected on the first night of the trip.
Sea Story had embarked on a six-day trip (Mahmut Serdar Alakus/Anadolu via Getty Images)
How did water get on board the Sea Story?
Sarah Martin, a British doctor who was on board the boat, remembered the weather wasn’t ‘terrible’, but furniture was ‘sliding around’ on the deck.
Hissora Gonzalez, a diver from Spain, struggled to sleep due to the motion on the boat, and just before 3am the entire vessel flipped onto its side and the engines cut out, resulting in total darkness.
Survivors recalled people being thrown from their beds, while possessions fell and obstructed exits. One survivor became trapped under heavy furniture.
Hissora said she didn’t know if she was walking on ‘the floor, on the ceiling [or] on the side’ of the boat, but she tried to find a life jacket. She recalled hearing water coming inside the boat, but she couldn’t see it.
Survivors waited for hours for rescue (BBC News)
How did survivors of the Sea Story get out?
The door to Hissora’s cabin ended up being above her, but she managed to escape when her friend, Cristhian Cercos, pulled her up.
A small group of passengers began to make their way along the emergency staircase, with Sarah describing how they had to ‘climb along door frames and beams’, through cooking oil and broken eggs that had fallen in the chaos.
When survivors reached the top deck, they had to jump 7-10 feet into the ocean.
“If the boat was going down, we needed to get away so it wouldn’t pull us down with it,” Sarah said.
Sarah’s cabin mate, Natalia Sanchez Fuster, tried to use debris to break the windows and help those still inside the boat, but she wasn’t able to get through the glass.
Sarah and Natalia had managed to grab life jackets, but they noticed the lights on them weren’t working.
“Looking back, I don’t think there were any batteries in there,” Sarah told the BBC.
Those who had jumped off the vessel managed to find two life rafts, though Sarah alleged a torch on board ‘didn’t have any batteries’, and there wasn’t ‘any water or any food’.
Five passengers were found alive after discovering air pockets on board (BBC News)
How did passengers become trapped?
Lucianna Galettan and her partner, Christophe Lemmens, weren’t able to make it to the top deck of the boat. Instead, they ended up in an air pocket in the engine room at the back, which was left sticking out of the water as the boat sank.
The couple were joined by one of the dive instructors, Youssef al-Faramawy, and the trio remained there for about 35 hours as they waited for help to arrive.
Rescue vessels were at the site of the sinking about eight hours after it took place, but those inside had ‘no communication with the outside’.
Another 27 hours later, the three survivors saw a light as a local diving instructor explored the wreck to search for survivors. He was able to lead all three to safety.
In another area of the boat, a Swiss man and a Finnish man had also managed survived in another air pocket.
Why did the Sea Story sink?
In the aftermath of the sinking, Egyptian officials said a huge wave had caused the boat to capsize. However, Dr Simon Boxall, a leading oceanographer from the University of Southampton, analyzed the weather and claimed there was ‘no way a 4m (13ft) wave could have occurred in that region, at that time’.
Those on board claimed the furniture on the top deck of the boat was not secured and may have shifted to one side of the boat, potentially causing it to become unstable.
Survivors also noted that the Sea Story sank between 2am-3am, but a distress signal was not received by local authorities until about 5:30am.
Egyptian authorities have opened an investigation into the sinking, but the findings have not yet been reported.
In total, 35 people were rescued from the boat, while up to 11 people died or are still missing.
A YouTube simulation has revealed what happened when a man tried to propose to his girlfriend underwater but drowned.
Steven Weber and his girlfriend, Kenesha Antoine, were on holiday in Tanzania in 2019 and the trip was once-in-a-lifetime, not just because the pair were staying at a luxurious resort, but also because Steven was planning on popping the question to Kenesha.
The couple were staying at the Manta Resort of Pemba Island when Steven got his goggles on, armed with both a sealed sheet of paper and a ring and dove into the water to swim up alongside the glass wall of the pair’s cabin to ask Kenesha to marry him.
Steven pressed the page up to the glass window while she was filming him, with the paper reading: “I can’t hold my breath for long enough to tell you everything I love about you BUT everything I love about you I love more EVERY DAY!”
He then flipped the paper over, it asking Kenesha for her hand in marriage and then he brought out a ring.
However, Steven never returned to the surface and a simulation has since been shared as to what may’ve happened.
Steven Weber proposed to his partner Kenesha Antoine in 2019 (Kenesha Antoine/Facebook)
Zack D Films shared the simulation creation to YouTube, as the clip explains as Steven ‘tried to swim back up for air something went terribly wrong’.
“He never made it back to the surface,” the video continues.
The post adds the resort confirmed that Steven was ‘freediving’ during the proposal and ‘drowned’.
At the time, CEO of the resort, Matthew Saus, told the BBC that staff responded to a ‘problem in the water’ during Steven’s dive, but when they arrived ‘absolutely nothing could be done’.
Indeed, freediving blog Padi explains some of the risks of freediving, noting it carries ‘some inherent risk due to the nature of the activity. Going to depth puts pressure on your body’.
The website states: “The most common depth or pressure-related risk in freediving is barotrauma injury (injury caused by pressure change) to the eyes, ears, sinuses, and lungs. These are almost always caused by a failure to equalize correctly or by moving too quickly on ascent or descent. “
Other warnings include not freedizing along, making sure you’re ‘well hydrated’ before and being careful of not forcing how far down you go in the water.
Shortly after the tragedy, Kenesha took to Facebook to pay tribute to her partner.
Kenesha paid tribute to Steven in a post to Facebook (Facebook/ Kenesha Antoine)
In a post shared on September 20, 2019, she wrote: “There are no words adequate enough to honor the beautiful soul that is Steven Weber, Jr. You were a bright light to everyone you encountered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many people. You were kind, compassionate, you regularly made me cry with laughter, and you showered me with a love like none I’d ever experienced.
“You never emerged from those depths, so you never got to hear my answer, ‘Yes! Yes! A million times, yes, I will marry you!!’ We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruelest twist of fate imaginable.”
Kenesha added she had been able to ‘take solace’ in the fact they’d just enjoyed a bucket list holiday in the days running up to Steven’s death, describing them as ‘so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together’.
If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence, contact The Compassionate Friends on (877) 969-0010.
What was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of a couple’s life ended in heartbreak.
A lot of planning goes into a proposal and, while Steven Weber’s intentions were extremely romantic, he died shortly after popping the question to his girlfriend, Kenesha Antoine.
The pair were on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tanzania, and were staying at the Manta Resort, off Pemba Island, which is reported to cost as much as $1,700-a-night for a cabin.
Steven Weber proposed to his partner Kenesha Antoine in 2019. (Facebook/Kenesha Antoine)
While Steven was diving, he presented a message to Kenesha and pressed it against the cabin glass window while she was filming him.
One side of the piece of paper read: “I can’t hold my breath for long enough to tell you everything I love about you BUT everything I love about you I love more EVERY DAY!”
Steven then flipped the paper round where it asked Kenesha to marry him, shortly followed him presenting a ring.
Kenesha was heard laughing with excitement in the clip, but she was never able to tell her partner yes to his face as Steven failed to resurface from his dive.
In the wake of his unexpected death, Kenesha penned a heartbreaking post to Facebook where she shared the video of his proposal and other snaps from their holiday.
“There are no words adequate enough to honor the beautiful soul that is Steven Weber, Jr,” she penned on September 20, 2019.
“You were a bright light to everyone you encountered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many people. You were kind, compassionate, you regularly made me cry with laughter, and you showered me with a love like none I’d ever experienced.”
The tear-jerking post went on: “You never emerged from those depths, so you never got to hear my answer, ‘Yes! Yes! A million times, yes, I will marry you!!’ We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruelest twist of fate imaginable.”
Kenesha further wrote that she was trying to ‘take solace’ in the fact they had just enjoyed a bucket list holiday in the days running up to Steven’s death, describing them as ‘so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together’.
Kenesha penned a heartbreaking post paying tribute to Steven. (Facebook/Kenesha Antoine)
“I will find you and marry you in the next lifetime, and the next, and the next, and the next… I love you so much, and I always will,” she continued her message that’s since been reacted to over 41,000 times.
At the time of the ordeal, Matthew Saus, CEO of the resort, said everyone was ‘shaken to their core’ after Steven’s death.
He told the BBC that staff responded to a ‘problem in the water’ during Steven’s dive, but when they arrived ‘absolutely nothing could be done’.
