The Current - Stranded, this diver lost oxygen for 25 minutes. He survived

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Christopher Lemons was working at the bottom of the North Sea when he was suddenly cut off from his support vessel — leaving him rapidly running out of oxygen, almost 100 metres below the surface. He tells Matt Galloway the incredible story of how he survived, which is now the subject of Last Breath, a Hollywood film starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu.

What do you see when you look around? Lively cities, growing neighborhoods, things that connect us. For those into skilled trades, it's a world they helped create. Discover more than 300 careers, paid apprenticeships, and the unmatched feeling of saying, I made that. Learn more at Canada.ca slash skilled trades. A message from the government of Canada. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. In 2012, Christopher Lemons was nearly a hundred meters below the surface of the North

Sea. He was working as a diver for an oil rig company. It is a dangerous job at the best of times, but this was an ordinary day. Until very quickly, it was not. Alarms started ringing, he lost communication with the rest of his team, he was running out of oxygen, and he found himself stranded and alone on the floor of the ocean. And yet, somehow, he survived. His incredible story was told in a documentary that's now the subject of a feature film called Last Breath. It stars

Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu. We've reached Christopher Lemons at his home in the south of France. Christopher, hello. Hello, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Go back to that day of September 18th 2012. How did your day start off? Well, I mean for us it was very much a normal day at the office, I guess. There was certainly no indication of what was to come. We were working away at about 300 feet down inside a structure, a manifold on the seabed.

We were sort of removing a section of pipeline, really just for us sort of the kind of thing we do every day, really. When you say a normal day at the office, I mean the office is working for an oil rig company and you're there doing what for them? Well, yeah, we work on the bottom of the ocean floor, yeah, in the oil and gas industry and which was a bit more commendable but there we go. And we were removing pipe work really from inside a wellhead basically, so an oil wellhead

and we were doing some pressure testing. We had a hose coming down from the vessel which was sort of 300 feet hovering above us I guess and we get delivered down to the worksite in a diving bell every day and we're attached to that diving bell by an umbilical basically which is exactly what it sounds like, you know, a giver of life. It provides you with an infinite supply of gas so that you can stay down there for the six hours a day that we spend on the seabed and also hot water to keep you warm in what are pretty close to freezing temperatures. So yeah, we were just sort of doing a bit of pressure testing. We had the spanners out really to start removing the section of pipework

before we heard the alarms, I guess. So tell me about the alarms and what was your first indication at a normal day in the office in a very unusual work environment that something was going wrong? Well, we heard these alarms. We have an open line of communication in our helmets, an earpiece and a microphone up to a single point

up on the vessel, which is a dive supervisor, who was a Canadian in fact, a guy called Craig Frederick. Yeah, we heard the alarms in the background, but that's not really an unusual thing to hear. We hear alarms being tested sometimes, and there are various oxygen and carbon dioxide alarms going off quite regularly. But there was just something about the way Craig then told us to get out of the structure and get ourselves clear and back to the diving bell. You could just tell from the tone of his voice that this was something fairly serious, not a drill.

I don't remember really calculating what was going on, but you could tell something was afoot. And the diving bell is, I mean, you've described it kind of like a taxi, right? It's the thing that gets you down that far under the surface. Yeah, that's exactly right. Because of the depths we dive at, it takes about four days to decompress.

So if you were to take stops like a scuba diver does, it would take four days to come back to the surface. So we have to live under pressure in order to avoid that. So we live in these tin cans essentially on a ship for 28 days at a time. So we spend a month in there and every day the diving bell sort of locks on to the top of the chambers and you climb up into it and you are sealed off and lowered down through a hole in the bottom

of the vessel, a moon pool, down to depth basically. And that means that when you open the door of the diving bell at the bottom you've got an equivalence of pressure inside and out. The water doesn't come in and you can just drop down the last 10 meters to the seabed to do your six hours work. It's exactly as you described, it's a taxi to get down to just the place we work really. You almost forget you're diving sometimes, you get so used to it spending so much time down there.

The team up top says it's time to get out of here, you need to get back to the diving bell. What happens then? Yeah, so we basically did as we were told. There is no other option when you're saturation diving, your tissues are saturated with inert gases, so the surface is never an option. The only safe haven is the diving bell. That's the only place you can go and it's fairly easy to get back there and find it even when the visibility is not very good because you simply follow your umbilical. So my colleague Dave Yuasa and I really turned to climb our umbilicals which because the vessel had lost control and was moving away from our position, it had begun to drag us basically it moved back over the top of the structure. We've been working inside So we really followed our umbilicals back over the top of this structure We had we had no choice and I sort of climbed hand over hand to get to the top of the structure

And then turn to check for that umbilical because you know It's absolutely critical that we we manage that at all times as divers wasn't gonna catch in anything But yes as it pans out, it did catch on something. All of a sudden, I'd become an anchor basically to an 8,000-ton vessel. Obviously, there's only going to be one winner in that situation. The vessel is moving. You're anchored to it and you're being dragged. Yeah, exactly that, except I'm not because because my umbilical has caught hot fast in this sort of one inch gap. As the vessel continues to move away in an uncontrolled fashion,

it really just become a sailboat at that point. There were 35 knot winds, and there was about a five or six meter swell. So it was pretty rough. And as it does so, then enormous tension starts to come on to the umbilical that is attached to me. It's attached to a harness I'm wearing via a carabiner, so there's nothing you can do to undo it really. My major concern was actually that it was going to slip around

the little gap it was caught in and that I would be pulled through like being pulled through a cheese grater really, which wasn't a very nice way to go either. But thankfully, I suppose, your dose of good luck, I guess, was that it did hold fast. But that meant that, yeah, enormous tension came onto the umbilical when the inevitable outcome, I suppose. You weren't down there by yourself. You had, as you mentioned, a diving partner who saw you were in trouble, right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we always go down as a three. One of us always stays within the diving bell every day. But you're exactly right. I was in the water with my colleague and my friend, Dave Yuasa, and Dave noticed I was in trouble. So he sort of turned to come back and assist me. When you see the Hollywood version, we have a bit of a chat, but in real life, we weren't able to talk to each other. I think my communication cable had been severed at that point. So we sort of had a face-to-face moment where I implored him to give me a hand and he basically looked me in the eye and said, you know, I can do

nothing because he was restricted by the length of his own umbilical. We only have about 150 feet out that day. So he's at the end of that and he's being pulled away from me. So we only got to within a couple of minutes of each other and then he disappeared into the darkness really. I lost sight of him and then I lost sight of his light and then he was pulled off into the unknown really in no small amount of danger himself. What do you remember about that? Because you have a finite supply of resources in the moments that follow as well. a finite supply of resources in the moments that follow as well. Yeah, that's exactly right. Just as my... I mean, actually before the umbilical snaps, which it does, I lost gas

or I lost... Very abruptly, had nothing to breathe. I think the hose must have become kinked because it was being stretched so much. We carry emergency tanks on our back, just scuba bottles, basically, it was at that time. The documentary makes a big deal of five minutes. The truth is I probably had about an eight or nine minute supply of gas on my back, which you can open with a knob on the side of the helmet. But yeah, that puts you in a very, very different world, a world where you've had this infinite supply to one where you have a very finite one exactly as you describe. I was very much on a clock at that point. Then very abruptly after that,

the tension became too much and the umbilical snapped very violently, very loud, sort of like a shotgun going off. That meant the tension was relieved, I guess. I fell backwards from the top of the structure, which was about 10 meters high, down to the seabed, in complete and utter pitch darkness, really. And as you say, I'm on a clock at that point. What do you remember about that? I feel like I've got a pretty lucid memory of everything in the following minutes. Initially, there was panic.

I was definitely, I would never pretend otherwise. I was very frightened. But you're very much in fight or flight at that point. My only thought was to get myself back to that diving bell, to get myself back to that breathable environment. So I stumbled around in the pitch pitch blackness and darkness and found the structure very fortunately and was able to climb to the top and look up. That was the seminal moment really when I realized there was nobody there. There was no, there was absolute darkness in the sea above me. The vessel, as it turns out, was nearly a thousand feet from me. They were nowhere near me and they were unable to regain control of it.

So it dawned on me quite quickly that even if Dave had been right there ready to rescue me, I was basically powerless to do anything myself and you know even if he'd been there, the margins between getting back into a breathable environment and running out of gas were already very very fine. So I resigned myself quite quickly to the fact that this was probably going to be, sounds a bit silly now, but this is probably going to be the place that I die. But that had a strangely calming effect, I think, knowing that I couldn't do much to help myself. And I tried to calm my breathing, but I think almost automatically my body did that for me. And I pretty much assumed the fetal position in the middle of the middle of the

structure on the roof and tried to put myself in the best place to be found. And at that point, I'm really completely dependent on them coming back to get me. So they were the start of a few dark moments, I guess. I was, you know, I always feel like a little bit of a charlatan because ultimately I'm I'm sat here absolutely fine. But obviously, it's rare to get this opportunity to reflect on what felt like my impending death. It was really feelings of grief. Like I said, the fear almost drained out of me at that point. I just remember it was consumed by grief and loss and the thought of my parents being told the unnatural order of things, that their son had died before them, and all the hopes and dreams that we

have in life. Obviously, I was in my early 30s, building a house and the thoughts of traveling and having children and all the excitement that life has to bring were about to be taken away from me, but not just taken away from me, taken away from me in this really alien, ethereal, hostile environment. You sort of wonder how on earth have I ended up here? I grew up in a sort of middle class family in Cambridge, you know, how have I ended up dying in this dark lonely place? So yeah, strange moments that I'll never forget. And they seem to last a lot longer than I thought they would, yeah. And then you lost consciousness.

Yeah, I think eventually the carbon dioxide, I remember the gas getting a bit harder to breathe so I knew I was running out, but I don't remember those very final moments. I think the carbon dioxide must have built up in my helmet and sort of put me to sleep really. So that wasn't a terrible way to go. If that's how I go in the end, that wasn't awful. But that's it for me really. After that, I'm absolutely the damsel in distress at that point.

I've got nothing to breathe and the vessel was still wildly out of control, like a thousand feet away, like I said, yeah. What do you see when you look around? Lively cities, growing neighborhoods, things that connect us. For those in the skilled trades, it's a world they helped create. Discover more than 300 careers, paid apprenticeships, and the unmatched feeling of saying, I made that. Learn more at Canada.ca slash skilled trades. A message from the Government of Canada. You're an entrepreneur.

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Obviously, you didn't end up staying down there 300 feet. We're having this conversation now, so unless there's some sort of post-life miracle that I don't know about. How did they find you? What happened? Yes, spoiler alert, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah, so they were really struggling to control the boat. They were trying to do it manually with joysticks and ultimately they employed, I'm trying to think what the equivalent would be for you.

They're a Norwegian crew. They literally just turned the computer off and turned it back on again. I don't think it's meant as a compliment. But fundamentally that's what they did. They reset the system and miraculously it back on again. I don't think it's meant as a compliment. But fundamentally, that's what they did. They reset the system and miraculously, it came back online. At that point, they were then able to bring the vessel

back over the top of me and Dave is able to drop back down from the diving bell and come and rescue me. But by the time he gets to me, I think nearly 35, 36 minutes have passed since I've run out of having anything to breathe. He then basically clips himself onto me and hauls me back up in a heroic effort, really, very, very difficult circumstances with the bell moving five or six meters up or down in the rough weather. A superhuman effort that I can obviously never thank him for, enough

for anyway. Then he feeds me back into the diving bell, my head back in and I'm completely unconscious. Duncan takes my diving helmet off. I'm bright, bright blue apparently. And he literally gave me two rescue breaths, to give me the kiss of life. And apparently I exhaled very, very violently and came around basically straight away.

You were without oxygen for how long? Twenty-five minutes plus, right? Yeah. We'll never really know because we don't know how long the tanks on my back lasted. But certainly there's a moment, which you'll see in the documentary, and they use the same footage in the real film where a sort of flying vehicle, a remotely operated vehicle, finds me. That's about 15 minutes in, and I'm definitely unconscious and out of gas at that point. So yeah, we know for sure it was at least half an hour,

you know, possibly slightly longer. But yeah, I mean, it's, I don't really like the word miracle, but obviously it seems, it seems to beg a belief that, you know, not only I survived that long, but also that, well, at least no one's been brave enough to say otherwise, that I survived without, without any brain damage, of course. I mean, the sense was because it's so cold down there that perhaps your body slowed itself down or something like that, and that was enough to preserve you? I definitely think that played a big part. I'd always assume that's exactly what it was.

You hear stories of kids falling through ice, don't you, and surviving for long periods. But yeah, I've come to learn that for the body to go properly into stasis to the point where it would sort of protect itself, if that had been the case, there's no way I would have been resuscitated quite so quickly. But yeah, I would have been hypothermic. There's no doubt about it. And that was definitely extrapolated, I guess, the gas that I had left and slowed my breathing and my heart rate right, right down. But I think more importantly than all of that was the gas that we breathe, which in that kind of diving, you don't breathe air. That's poisonous basically at that sort of depth. We breathe a helium oxygen mixture. And whilst that night we were only breathing 6% oxygen in that mix,

which obviously for you or I would knock us unconscious pretty quickly right now. But the miracle of pressure and partial pressure meant that that was the same as breathing almost five times as much oxygen as we're breathing now. So I think that basically saturated my tissues with oxygen, the very building blocks, the cells of life had just enough to cling on. But the truth is I don't know. I've been to lots of places, the British Medical Society and all sorts of conferences where they discuss it and they find they're almost as disbelieving as I am really. So yeah, it seems extraordinary. Why do you think you survived? I mean, it's side of all of the scientific parts of it. Why do you think you survived? Well, definitely not because I deserved it, that's for sure. I think it was the gas.

I think ultimately it was a combination of both, of the gas that we breathe, the oxygen levels and the cold which just dragged it all out. I also think that I probably, because of the fact that I exhaled so violently in the end, that suggests I had a lung full of high oxygen content gas. Again, that might have been with a very, very, very slow breathing rate or heartbeat, just enough to sustain almost like a breath hold, a free dive, you know, which people can sort of hold their breath from crazy lengths of time, which I can't incidentally, but you know, the equivalent because all my bodily functions have slowed right down just enough to drag me out. But I don't know, you know, answers on a postcard

really. How are you different now than you were then, do you think? Well, I'm a lot older, I suppose, less naive, unfortunately. But yeah, there's not been an epiphany in my life, if that's what you're driving at. It definitely, I feel like I have a more acute awareness of death perhaps, and I think about the fragility of life and the finite nature of our time on earth and so on. But I suppose everybody thinks about that to some extent, only anyway it may be just a bit heightened for me. But in terms of day-to-day life, I've found

that life takes over really and things are quickly forgotten and you move on and the sort of banalities of existence suddenly take over. You don't spend your days thinking about it. I reflect on it occasionally, but yeah, I also don't feel we were traumatized. Well, certainly I think I can speak for the other two in the water that day. We almost had the euphoria of coming through it, so we don't feel traumatized in any way. I'm perhaps talking about it constantly, which I do. I do a lot of public speaking about it and things like that these days around the world. And I guess that's cathartic in nature,

allows you to move by it and feel a bit disassociated from it in some respects as well. Are you somebody who stays on the land now? No, I went back, we went back three weeks later to the same place where we were the first people back in the water. So I carried on diving for about another 10 years just to get back on the bike really,

and that and I can't really do anything else. But yeah, now I still work in the industry a bit, but I supervise now, so I stay in the dry and the safe, yes. And I'm quite relieved to say so as well, yeah. What is it like to see this just finally kind of portrayed by Hollywood? Finn Cole from Peaky Blinders plays you, which is, I mean, that's not a bad person to have lining up behind you. Yes, good looking lad, nice curly hair if you've ever seen. That's not very accurate portrayal,

but that was very flattering. It's lovely, it's been, it's surreal as you can imagine. You know, just the fact that the documentary was made felt incredible, but for them to move on and make a sort of feature version with these great actors in has been lovely. Yeah, very humbling and a lovely experience. We've been involved at arm's length, I suppose.

And we were out at the premiere in New York, got to party with the stars a bit and stuff. So that's all been a very, a lovely experience. And yeah, there's a little bit of Hollywood embellishment, but they do follow the story pretty closely. And yeah, it's been very flattering and lovely to watch them do it. So, a nice experience, yeah.

I just think it's really interesting, finally, it's really interesting. You use the word luck a lot in telling your story. What does that word mean to you, given what you've gone through? Yeah, well, I think our boss, when we came out, I remember he said, someone said, oh, they were very lucky. And he said, well, you know, I think sometimes people make their own luck. And there's just truth to that. I think it's maybe when I say luck, you know, we definitely feel like we suffered a very single point

failure. It was a mistake ultimately at the point of installation of a computer system that caused the whole incident. Beyond that, there are a lot of things that lined up in my favor that just meant I just made it back without any lasting damage. Lots and lots of small things. Do you call them luck? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not a great believer in it, I suppose. I use the word quite casually, I think. But yeah, it's harder than I thought. I certainly feel lucky. I think you are.

It's a hell of a story. It's really good to talk to you about it. Christopher, thank you. My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Christopher Lemons is a saturation diver in the film about his near death experience and rescue is called Last Breath.

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