Everyone assumed it was another corpse, and the diver moved toward it.
"But when he went to grab the hand, the hand grabbed him!" Tony Walker, project manager for the Dutch company DCN Diving, said of the rescue in May.
Harrison Odjegba Okene, the tug's Nigerian cook, had survived for three days by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. A video of Okene's dramatic rescue was posted on the Internet more than six months after the rescue and has gone viral this week.
To this day, Okene believes his rescue after 72 hours underwater was the result of divine deliverance. The 11 other seamen aboard the tug Jascon 4 died.
On the video, there was an exclamation of fear and shock from Okene's rescuers, and then joy as the realization set in that this hand belonged to a survivor. "What's that? He's alive! He's alive!" a voice can be heard exclaiming.