The sub was convinced he had to recover another body.
Then that hand shook his wrist.
For a moment, at 30 meters deep, no one could believe what was happening.
It was 2013. Harrison Okene worked as a cook on board the Jascon-4 trailer, engaged off the coast of Nigeria.
Shortly before dawn he was preparing breakfast for the crew when a giant wave struck the boat.
Within a few minutes the trailer turned and sank, finishing on the bottom about thirty meters deep.
Harrison was stunned against the walls while the water invaded the ship's premises.
He managed to get out of the bathroom where he was, but by now it was impossible to figure out where the exit was.
In the total darkness only heard the noise of the metal that deformed and the cries of the comrades.
Then, one after the other, those voices died.
Instead of heading towards a gate now blocked by water pressure, he made an instinctive decision.
He swimped into the wreck.
That's how he found a small air bag that was trapped in the ship.
It was tiny.
But he would save his life.
For almost sixty hours he remained there, immersed in the water to the chest, without knowing whether it was day or night.
Every movement consumed oxygen.
Every breath made the air more and more breathable.
To survive he recovered some floating objects, he built a small support to stay as far as possible outside the icy water and tried to keep calm.
He repeatedly heard the noise of the ships above him.
He beats on the hull with all his strength.
No one heard it.
Meanwhile his family had already been informed that the entire crew had died.
The Jascon-4 was now considered a wreck from which only the bodies were recovered.
When the divers entered the ship, they did not seek survivors.
One of them slowly advanced among the flooded corridors when he saw a hand emerge from darkness.
He thought he belonged to a victim.
He grabbed it.
And the hand returned the hold.
The surprise of the sub was taken from the camera mounted on his helmet.
There was still a living man inside that wreck.
The rescue, however, was not finished.
After almost sixty hours spent at that depth, an immediate return to the surface could have been fatal due to the decompression disease.
The rescuers provided him with breathing air and transferred him to a slow decompression procedure, which is fundamental to allow him to survive.
Harrison Okene was the only one of the twelve men who left Jascon-4 alive.
For a long time he was tormented by nightmares.
It relived the sinking, the dark and the feeling of being trapped under water.
Many would choose never to approach the sea again.
He did the opposite.
After recovering, he decided to become a professional diver, working precisely in the depths that had almost marked the end of his life.
Not because he stopped being afraid.
But because he didn't want to allow that fear to decide the rest of his existence.