To this day, Okene believes that his rescue after 72 hours underwater at a depth of 30 metres is a sign of divine deliverance. The other 11 seaman aboard the Jascon 4 died.

Divers sent to the scene were looking only for bodies, according to Tony Walker, project manager for the Dutch company DCN Diving. It was called to the scene because it was working on a neighbouring oil field 120 kilometres away.

The divers had already pulled up four bodies.

So when a hand appeared on the TV screen Walker was monitoring in the rescue boat, showing what the diver in the Jascon saw, everybody assumed it was another corpse.

"The diver acknowledged that he had seen the hand and then, when he went to grab the hand, the hand grabbed him," Walker said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Video: 'He's alive!' Nigerian Cook Survives Two Days Under Sea In Shipwreck Air Bubble

"It was frightening for everybody," he said. "For the guy that was trapped because he didn't know what was happening. It was a shock for the diver while he was down there looking for bodies, and we (in the control room) shot back when the hand grabbed him on the screen."

On the video, there's an exclamation of fear and shock from Okene's rescuer, and then joy as the realisation sets in. Okene recalls hearing: "There's a survivor! He's alive."

Walker said Okene couldn't have lasted much longer.

"He was incredibly lucky he was in an air pocket but he would have had a limited time (before) ... he wouldn't be able to breathe anymore."

A diver used hot water to warm Okene up, then attached him to an oxygen mask. Once free of the sunken boat, he was put into a decompression chamber and then safely returned to the surface.

The full video of the rescue captured by divers was released by DCN Diving after a request from the Associated Press. Initially, a shorter version of the rescue emerged on the internet. The authenticity of the video was confirmed through conversations with DCN employees in the Netherlands. The video showing Okene was also consistent with additional photos of him on the rescue ship. Okene on Tuesday confirmed the events.

Okene's ordeal began around 4.30am on May 26.

Always an early riser, he was in the toilet when the tug, one of three towing an oil tanker in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta waters, gave a sudden lurch and then keeled over and sank.

"I was dazed and everywhere was dark as I was thrown from one end of the small cubicle to another," Okene said in an interview after his rescue with Nigeria's newspaper.

He groped his way out of the toilet and tried to find a vent, propping doors open as he moved on. He discovered some tools and a life vest with two flashlights, which he stuffed into his shorts. When he found a cabin of the sunken vessel that felt safe, he began the long wait, getting colder and colder as he played back a mental tape of his life - remembering his mother, friends, mostly the woman he'd married five years ago.

He worried about his colleagues - 10 Nigerians and the Ukrainian captain. They would have locked themselves into their cabins, standard procedure in an area stalked by pirates. He got really worried when he heard the sound of fish, shark or barracudas he supposed, eating and fighting over something big.

He said in the interview with the : "I started calling on the name of God. ... I started reminiscing on the verses I read before I slept. I read the Bible from Psalm 54 to 92. My wife had sent me the verses to read that night when she called me before I went to bed."

He survived off just one bottle of Coke, all he had to sustain him during the trauma.

By the time he was saved, relatives had been told the sailors were all dead.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Boat's cook rescued after three days underwater

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