Chris Lemons was stranded 300 ft down under (Image: BBC )
Chris Lemons stared death in the face when he lay almost 100 metres under the surface of the sea following a catastrophic computer failure, which had caused his oxygen supply to be cut off and his boat to drift away. But it was the miracle of his body lasting 35 minutes on a six-minute emergency air tank and the efforts of his colleagues that saw him live another day and escape the terrifying ordeal unscathed.
Mr Lemons, from Mallaig in the Highlands, is a saturation diver and worked in the North Sea where he would dive from his ship in the Bibby Topaz in a diving bell where he would repair oil rig structures.
But Mr Lemons’ life changed forever in September 2012 when he became trapped on the seabed for nearly 40 minutes, with his back-up gas tank only holding six minutes of breathable air.
When the dynamic positioning computer on his vessel failed 300 feet above him, the ship moved away in the rough weather, which caused his umbilical, which supplies heat and oxygen, to become taut and snap.
It was then that Mr Lemons became aware of what he was facing.
Chris Lemons survived for 35 minutes without oxygen (Image: BBC )
He told documentary ‘Last Breath’, which is currently in UK cinemas: “I realised very quickly that my chances of survival or being rescued were pretty much non-existent.
“You do the quick maths in the moment and I knew that the
