A North Sea diver survived a catastrophic computer failure that caused his boat to drift away and cut off his oxygen supply. Chris Lemons, a saturation diver, was working nearly 100 metres below the surface when the incident occurred in September 2012.
Lemons was repairing a pipe on the sea bed at the Huntington Oil Field east of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, when he heard an alarm. The dive supervisor urgently instructed him and his colleague Duncan Allcock to return to the diving bell. Unknown to them, the ship's positioning computer had failed, causing the vessel to drift.
Lemons's umbilical cable, which supplied breathing gas, hot water, light, and electricity, became snagged on the metal structure. The tension from the 8,000-tonne ship snapped the cable, leaving him with only a six-minute emergency air supply. He fell to the sea bed in darkness, resigned to his fate.
Despite the odds, his colleagues Dave Youasa and Duncan Allcock located him after a superhuman effort. They hauled him into the diving bell, where Allcock gave him two breaths. After 35 minutes without a proper oxygen supply, Lemons miraculously revived and suffered no lasting ill effects from the lack of oxygen.
Lemons later returned to diving and married his fiancée. His story is the subject of a documentary film, Last Breath.
