A ship’s cook has survived two days under the sea trapped in an airlock in a  sunken tugboat.

Shocked rescue divers found Nigerian Harrison Okene, 29, in the upturned  Jascon-4 which capsized in a heavy Atlantic swell 60 hours earlier as it went to  the aid of a refuelling oil tanker 20 miles off the coast of Nigeria.

Of the 12 people on board, divers had already recovered 10 bodies and another  crew member is still missing.

Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it  shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and  adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers  eventually rescued him.

“I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it’s the end.

“I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not,” Okene said, parts of his skin peeling away after days soaking in the salt water.

“I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off  my tongue,” he said.

Speaking in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger  Delta, Okene said he spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber until his  body pressure was returned to normal.

He said his survival is a “miracle” but the memories of his time in the  watery darkness still haunt him and he is not sure he will return to the  sea.