I survived three days in a capsized boat on the ocean floor – praying in my air bubble

Harrison Okene had no choice but to listen in the dark as the shouts of his colleagues fell silent. His throat throbbed and his tongue peeled. Ten years on, he explains why he loves the sea more than ever – and decided to become a diver

Harrison Okene was sitting on the toilet – surely the worst place to be as disaster strikes – when a freak wave hit the tugboat he was working on, and turned it upside down. Now he was on the floor, and the toilet was above him.

“I was trying to open the door to get out, when the toilet fell and hit me on the head,” he says. He just had time to see blood pour from the wound before the lights went off. “Everywhere was dark.” The bathroom began to fill with water. “It didn’t take long,” he says. “One minute, two minutes” – and he felt the boat touch the seabed. Thirty metres (100ft) below the surface, it came to rest.

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