 Whereas in the North Sea, I don't think a diver has died of anything other than natural causes since the 80s, really. That single point failure is just technically not supposed to be able to happen. Explosive decompression and death. Even if David had been right in front of me there and then it would have been, you know, fine margins to getting me back to the diving bell with my hat off in time. Chris Lemons, deep sea diver, unintentional star of the incredible documentary, if we can call it that, The Last Breath, what an honour to meet you, mate. No, the honours are mine. Thank you very much for having me along, it's very kind of you. Wow, it was in my head that I know you do public speaking so I guess it's good to get yourself out there a bit on podcasts. Do you get a bit sort of fed up with all this attention? I wouldn't say I get fed up with it. I've always been a bit self-conscious of it, I think, because, you know, I'm sure we'll come onto the story in a minute, but, you know, people often want to talk to me, which is lovely and I'm quite happy to talk about it, but I always feel that the others involved in the story who probably deserve far more credit than I do, you know, the real heroes, if you like, often get sort of, yeah, left out a little bit, I guess. So, yeah, I have a little bit of a guilt complex about that, but other than that, I'm very happy to talk to people about it, yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, obviously, for a podcast, that's wonderful. Yes, I mean, when we said hello earlier, I'm full of emotion, mate, because, oh, gosh, I think as a diver myself, although obviously not to the standard that you've trained to, but I don't know what you're saying, mate. Folks, we've got a humble man here, and that is always a great start for a podcast, but just honest. I am just a quick synopsis on why this moved me so much is I've done all the sport diving, so I've dived in all the kind of exotic locations around the world when I dived in a wetsuit. Oh, my God, it was so easy. You felt like the king of the sea when I went on expedition to Antarctica to dive, I moved to a compressed neoprene dry suit. And then things got like considerably more technical. Even your rig was set up. You had to have a different, let's just say, valves on your equipment. In case one froze, then you still had an emergency and all this. And we, even in the training, Chris, I started to struggle with the buoyancy thing. I know this is a different issue when you're on the bottom of the North Sea. But I'm perforating an eardrum because I was just really having problems going between the buoyancy jacket and the suit itself, both of which you can put air into, right? So I was having problems there. We did our first dive in Antarctica. I'm on the very first dive, one of our team drowned. Down and die. Yeah, the Japanese girl was literally sat next to me in the in the rib. There's the inflatable guys as we were gearing up. And her and her dive buddy went off quite quickly, which was surprising because we're all just taking our time doing a buddy checks. Then an American girl popped up upside down. So she had air in her legs, which is just an amateur, amateur thing, right? And in that confusion, the Japanese girl immediately had problems so she was trying to grab hold of the rib. The dive master is trying to zoom over and rescue this girl. These guys, the water was just going over their face. And I think what happened is she'd lost her regulator, you know, she'd taken a regulator out when she let go. She was negatively buoyant, so she probably sank immediately. And then in the panic, trying to grab her regulator when what you should do is just ditch ditch your weight and obviously you're going to pop straight up. Yeah, she she died and that was horrendous, horrendous. Yeah. So so that was that. And also I I went on a local dive here in Implim of where I live with a couple of buddies and we just went down a rock wall. And suddenly when the tide started dragging out, it it really become like a safety issue, you know, we just focus in coming up. And I started to have a panic attack of all things, which like I'm not prone to. Yeah, yeah. And what you don't want when you're 30 meters down and luckily my dive buddy was just yeah, checking his computer. And, you know, then we went up gradually. But it that brought home the gosh, just that bloody life and death thing about diving. You know, it only takes a little thing to go wrong. And then in addition to that, of course, there's a video on YouTube of this is it the blue hole in Egypt? Yeah, where there's this archway that some divers try and swim through. But because it's so deep by the time they get through it, they've run out of air and then suddenly they become negatively buoyant because they've got no air to put in their suit, you know, into into their B.C.D. They start to plummet and one of these guys that died had it all on film. So he's just going down and you can hear this gargled screaming as he's going down and then you've got to watch him on the ocean floor. Very similar to your documentary where you're thinking, well, with this guy, you know, he's dead and it's all there on film. So when I watched last breath, I just think a combination of all those things. Yeah, you know, just seeing you lying there and thinking, oh, God, I mean, I think you know when you watch documentary, it's it's got a good ending. Yeah, I don't know if people realize that with that film, because some people I think guess and some don't that, you know, there's going to be well, for me anyway, happy ending. Yeah, but you're right. I mean, it's an emotional. It's a bit of an emotional roller coaster anyway to film. And yeah, there's something about underwater, isn't there? That touches us all in some ways. You know, it's a fear, isn't it? We all have a, you know, the truth be told. We've all got a fear of the darkness and the and, you know, the unknown and the, you know, and drowning and things like that. You know, it's, you know, I could also add sorry to be. So to put all this on you. But I went to a festival in Portugal with my best mate, Lee, and he he drowned on the first evening in the lake that we were camp next to. Sorry to hear that. Yeah, that's horrendous. And then you're, you know, I've said this before, you're on a late side with your mate's dead body at your feet. And yeah, and you've just got a. You know, it all just becomes very, very real, Chris, you know. So so yeah, that's probably why I'm a bit emotional, mostly involved in your in your story. Yeah, well, it sounds like you've got every reason to be. Yeah, that's that sounds very, very tough. Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, the thing is about our job is that the people always assume it's very dangerous, you know, in a weird way. I think everything you describe that, you know, certainly with the scuba accidents, you know, I think scuba diving is far more dangerous than than what I do because all the inherent dangers, the principal dangers in diving are your ascent, you know, your lack of control of buoyancy, basically, you know, which can, you know, review as your ears, but obviously can cause decompression illnesses and things like that. And most of those sort of problems are taken out of the equation in the diving that I do because, you know, for us, we're lowered down in a diving bed every day and back up and, you know, our ascent and decent are controlled very, very accurately by, you know, large teams of people. So, you know, uncontrolled ascents, things like that don't really happen in the, you know, certainly in a commercial saturation diving world. So the incidents and problems we have are usually working incidents, sort of construction injuries and things like that. You know, it's trapped fingers and dropping loads on people, that kind of stuff. You know, that's when people get hurt. They're not very often that they're diving related problems because that's so controlled if you like. But as you said, when something does go wrong, you're in an environment where it's, it's, you know, everything is exacerbated, isn't it? And all the problems are heightened because of where you are. Yeah. How did you get into saturation diving? Yeah, I don't really have a romantic story for this. I think I make one up really. So David Duncan, who in the film as well, they were both sort of passionate divers before they became commercial divers. Dave used to sort of teach scuba out in Thailand and things like that. And I think Duncan mentions in the film, he was a sort of a Jacques Cousteau fan and that kind of thing. And they both found a way to make their, their passion, their vocation, I guess, you know, but for me, that wasn't really the case. I was, I was just I was quite young, you know, about 20 and not really certain of where to go with my life, really, and what to do and a bit lost, truth be told. And a friend's father just got me a summer job, really, working on the back deck of a DSV of a diving, a diving boat out in the North Sea, just for a bit of pocket money, really. And it gave me the opportunity to see these guys work in first hand. And yeah, that was great for me. That was, you know, I found my calling, but it gave me direction in life. And I decided that's what I wanted to do. They probably turned up in fancier cars than me on the quay side as well, which helped, you know, fun, totally honest. But yeah, it was good to ever since then it's been, you know, my life's had a bit of purpose and direction, which has been very good for me. It's, you know, a new one I wanted to do. And I, you know, took the steps to get there, basically. Yes. Yeah. Sorry, it's not a better story than that. No, I'm sort of a bit curious, because obviously, as an ex-marine, it's a lot of it's something that a lot of servicemen go on to do, isn't it? Yeah, we've got a lot of ex-marines, yeah, of ex-forces people in general in all the places, not just the divers amongst the divers, but, you know, on the boat in general, we've got, you know, people from the RAF, the mechanics and that sort of thing. You know, so, yeah, it's definitely, I don't know why there is. I guess it's, yeah, people will see it as, you know, there's the same sort of sense of adventure, I guess, that you maybe had when you, you know, the reasons you join the marines are probably seven of the reasons people go into something like diving. You know, it's a bit different, isn't it? And it's a bit of an adventure and it's a challenge and all that kind of thing. So, yeah, the two suit and the temperament obviously suits as well, you know? Yeah, and I think the one thing about us marines is we were always looking for a quick buck. Yeah, was that as well, yeah. And it pays, obviously, considerably well. Yeah, I mean, it's an insecure lifestyle, I guess, you know, you're not always, very few of us are sort of permanently contracted if you like amongst divers, it tends to be, you know, tends to make hay while the sunshine kind of work. But, yeah, again, that appeals often to, yeah, ex-forces people, I think, and, yeah, most of them are very, very good, you know, they're sort of the training and so on suits well to what we do, you know? And you often hear it referred to as, is it the two most dangerous jobs in the world? One of them is something like Canadian lumberjack. The other one is deep sea diver. Is that? I don't know how true that is. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, in the UK it's probably fishing, isn't it? And stuff like that, I would think. Ah, trawler work, yes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's what I'm sort of touching upon. There is this sort of little misconception. It all depends how it's managed. So if you, if you're a diver in the States, for example, it's just strange for such an advanced country, they're very, you know, these sounds a bit harsh, but a bit behind in terms of the safety culture they have there, and they kill divers all the time, you know? Whereas in the North Sea, I don't think a diver has died of anything other than natural causes since the 80s, really. You know, maybe maybe early 90s, we lost one, but, you know, it's so regulated. So I could, you know, I work on a boat with 110 people just just there really to put two divers on the sea bed, you know, and everything is micromanaged and risk assessed. And, you know, the same as every other workplace, you know, on the on the planet at the moment, you know, to a point where it's almost too much, but it does, it does has massively reduced the incidence of certainly of deaths and injuries as well, you know, for the better. But yeah, worldwide, it's definitely a profession that potentially can be very, very dangerous, you know, if it's mismanaged, you know, bad people in bad positions who are gung-ho about things and who treat divers as cannon fodder, you know? Had you had any other scrapes before this one? Nothing of that magnitude, really. No, I mean, yeah, I've been lucky. I've always worked in good places, I think. You start off on a sort of saturation diver now, but originally you have to sort of do so many years as an air diver. And so I worked off sort of the West Coast of Africa and Brazil and Middle Eastern places like that. Excuse me. Not cool, though. So yeah, definitely being worked in hairier places, but generally I've worked for big companies where safety has been paramount, really. And you get to the point when you've worked in those situations, you know, that becomes second nature to you and I wouldn't go anywhere and accept anything else now, you know? And I wouldn't accept it for anybody I was working with either, you know, just wouldn't put up with it. But in the infancy of your career, you're less attuned to that, you're more keen to make a buck, like you say, you know, and you'll do whatever you're told, you don't know any better, do you? So I've had, you know, most of mine have been close misses with construction problems, so I've had people nearly drop, you know, cranes on me and things like that. You know, they've piled up in the seabed next to me. I haven't even noticed they've been there, you know. So I've had near misses of that nature, but yeah, certainly nothing of the magnitude of what happened to me in, well, 2012 now, yeah. So talking of risk assessments then. So our friends at home in my simplistic terms, the computer system on the boat failed and therefore the navigation of the boat failed and it started drifting and it just dragged Chris across the sea floor. At which point you couldn't go anymore because you came up against this construction and then obviously all your umbilical cords, so your heat, air, this kind of thing, promptly snapped, leaving you with five minutes of air in your emergency bottle. Was there no risk assessment for this happening to a ship? Yeah, that's a very good question. I suppose the short, I mean, we, so that position, that system is called a dynamic positioning system and it's exactly as you described. It's a sort of a computer system which has various sensors, beacons on the seabed and torque wires, which are sort of weighted wires, which give an angle of inclination back to the ship and GPS as well. Yeah, that feeds all this information back to a central computer which then instructs the thrusters and propellers around the ship to counteract the effect of the wave and the winds and stuff and allows the ship to stay in one geographical position. To within one or two meters of accuracy, remarkable really in pretty bad weather. So we are constantly aware, but that system might fail to some extent. I don't think anybody would ever know or fail completely, but yeah, we are always, we preach what we call umbilical management all the time. So you need to be constantly wary of where your umbilical is because it's exactly as you described, and what it sounds like, which is a giver of life, basically everything you need to survive in that environment comes down a hose, basically, your gas to breathe and hot water to pump around your suit to keep you warm and power for your camera and your light and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we, everything we do when we're working particularly in structures where that might be compromised or if we're working on rigs, for example, we're always wary that your umbilical needs to be managed and you need to be free in the event of what we call a runoff, so the ship drifting away in a certain direction. So we do the complete failure of the system. I don't think there's anything, I mean, I don't, I won't say we ever anticipated really, which sounds terrible. There are multiple, it's supposed to be, the ships are designed in many respects so that they cannot be a single point failure. They're supposed to be backups to all of our systems, so that's our life support systems, like the hot water, like the gas, multiple redundancies. And the same with that dynamic positioning system, it has a, if the computer fails, then there's a backup computer, and then there's another backup computer, you know, that single point failure is just technically not supposed to be able to happen. But yeah, there's the very lesson in itself, isn't it? It can and it did. They had an electrical fault, which was there right from the point of installation apparently, and it suffered a catastrophic failure. And as you say, everything on the bridge went black and dark, and they lost all their navigational screens. It was dark outside. We were working in open water, so they had no real, there was nothing for them to orientate themselves with. There wasn't a rig or anything like that. They just had black windows and black screens. Yeah, and the ship basically was at the mercy of the wind and the waves at that point and started to drift away. We, on the seabed, we didn't really know exactly what was going on. We have a sort of dive supervisor who talks in our ear all the time, so he was just telling us to get ourselves out of the structure. We could hear alarms and things. But we weren't panicking, you know, these kind of things happened. So we sort of made our way out of the structure. We were working right inside the structures. We made our way out with no problems. And, you know, the bell, the bell was, the diving bell was supposed to be straight in front of us with our umbilicals sort of rooted safely towards it. And when we came out of the structure, it wasn't there. So we knew there was an issue, and our umbilicals instead of being in front of us were wrapped back over the top of the structure we've been working within. So, you know, the thing is when you're diving that debt, you've only got one safe haven. The dive and bell is the only place you can go. The surface is never an option because your tissues are saturated with inert gases. It would be explosive decompression and death, you know, for an absolute certainty. So you don't really have to think too much. There's only one place to go, and that's to follow your umbilical back to the dive and bell. So that's what we both did. But I had to climb my umbilical to be able to get to the top of the structure and in doing so, I left a loop behind me. But because we, you know, we are always conscious of our umbilicals, you know, I turned straight away to try and to make sure it didn't catch on anything, but, you know, basically I was too late and it had caught on this metal outcrop basically and stuck fast very, very quickly. The film sort of loops a bit of the footage so it sort of belies how quickly it really happened. And it, you know, it was wedged under this, the loop was wedged under this little metal outcrop and I effectively became an anchor, you know, for an 8,000 ton vessel when there's only ever going to be one winner in that situation, isn't there? So yeah, it was a strange moment. So I remember at the time, I don't think I didn't really compute what was happening. You know, you're too busy trying to save yourself and I remember having been worried about the umbilical breaking particularly. It didn't really cross my mind, but it was sort of, it was slipping around this tiny gap that it got caught in and I thought, I'm going to get pulled through that, you know, that's going to be like going through a cheese grater. You know, that's not going to be a pleasant ending and my legs were sort of sprained and I thought, these are going to break and yeah, it was a scary moment. It's definitely, yeah. But it's quite ironic that it's snapping which you'd think would be your worst nightmare to actually save your life. Yeah, absolutely right. There's all sorts of things going to happen there. My helmet could have been ripped off. Yeah, I could have been pulled through that gap. So yeah, you're right. The fact that it stuck fully, which it did eventually, it stopped slipping was a good thing. You're absolutely right. And yeah, it sort of stretched and I lost my breathing gas before the umbilical snapped. I think the hose must have kinked or extended the point that, you know, the gas couldn't pass down it anymore. So yeah, I had to turn out and you sort of touched on it there. We carry an emergency supply. So I scooped the bottles basically on our back at the time. I had a twin sets of two seven litre bottles which are turned on. And at the moment you're doing that, you're going from a world where you have, you know, an infinite supply of gas. Essentially, you know, it comes from the boat. You can stay down there for days if you needed to to a very finite supply. And yeah, the film sort of makes out five minutes. But you know, if you do the mass properly, the truth has probably been more like about nine minutes. I think, depending on how quickly I breathed it. Um, yeah. So you're on a clock then because, you know, after nine minutes, you need to be back in a diving bell. Otherwise it's game over, you know. Um, and the, yeah, the umbilical continued to stretch and eventually eventually snapped. Um, with a, you know, like a shotgun. Then I fell backwards towards the sea bed and found myself sort of like an upturn turtle in the most complete and utter blackness. Yeah. It was a scary moment, definitely. And in that moment, how did you feel? As in, was it just immediate? Oh my God, I'm dead. Or was it panic? Or was it, were you able to stay calm? Uh, no, I won't lie to you and stay, I said calm. I was definitely panicking. Um, I don't remember thinking very much at all, to be honest. I think it's very much that fight or flight, isn't it? Um, adrenaline rushes. I'm sure you've experienced in your forces days at some point that, you know, it's, um, I don't remember thinking anything at all really. Just, you're just purely there to, to save yourself. Um, so I, as I said, you know, the only thing I'm thinking is of getting myself back to that, to that dive and bail. So, um, my instinct was to, to find my way upwards. So I sort of, uh, I needed to find the structure we'd been working on. I thought I'll get onto the roof. So I can see where the diving bed is and, you know, get myself back to it somehow. I don't really know how I was planning on doing that to be honest. I know my buoyancy was severed along with the, um, with the umbilical. You don't, we don't have a feed from our bailout bottles to, we also to a, uh, to, we sort of have like a stab jacket everywhere to inflate. If we do need to become buoyant. Um, but I sort of managed to scramble in the complete darkness. I was lucky to find a structure tour really. I mean, I could easily walked out in the other direction. It was complete pop luck really, fumbling around for the toilet in the middle of the night. Really bumped into it and I was able to climb up. But that was a sort of the seminal moment for me really was when I got to the top of the structure and I looked up fully expecting for some reason to see the, the dive and bail there or to see Dave or Duncan on their way back to fetch me and you know, looked up and saw nothing but blackness above me and no sign of any lights or the lights of the dive and bail or anything at all. And um, that was stat, had a stat in its own way, had a strangely calm and effect. I found at that point, I think when not that I'd given up hope, but I'd sort of did the math roughly and worked out that, you know, whatever guess I did have, I'd use quite a bit up, just getting myself back up to the top. And even if Dave had been right in front of me there and then it would have been, you know, fine margins to getting me back to the dive and bail and my hat off in time. And with nobody there, you know, I realized quite quickly that chances were pretty slim and you know, if not non-existent. And that definitely had a strangely calm and effect. I don't know if that was a conscious one or a subconscious one, a bit of both, I think, you know, I think I hadn't given up, but I definitely resigned myself to what seemed like the inevitable. And yeah, and sort of the panic, panic faded from me at that point. And I did try and regulate my breathing a bit to try and make what I did have last as long as possible. But yeah, I went from definitely transitioned from a sort of panicky survival mode to a to one of resignation and what felt like grief, I think, you know, the strange luxury almost, if you like, of certainly thinking I was about to die and having a few minutes to think about it, you know. So friends at home just trying to paint the picture. So the ship is basically out of control and it's wandered off its position. All the engineers are desperately trying to get, revive the computer so they can get back over to where Chris is. In the meantime, the ship is attached to the diving bell. The diving bell is attached to Chris and Dave. Dave, although he's being dragged, has managed to get back in the bell and the engineers are frantically not only watching Chris on the TV screen. Must have all made the assumption this is game over. And it was just to see you sort of moving like this on the bottom of the ocean was traumatic in itself. And this nine minutes that Chris talks about, they didn't recover the ship for what Chris, about half an hour. Yeah. So yeah, as you said, the boat was about, ended up being about 250 meters away. And there's a sort of a snail trail of their efforts to bring it under control manually. It was the chief officer and the captain together. They're four joysticks that have to try and control with no references. I mean, ultimately they were doing their best and they were unable to regain control. The diving bell, as you said, is hanging underneath. Dave only has 50 meters of umbilical. So he's only able to get 50 meters away from the bell. So he was unable to get anywhere near me. But what they did have was this, we have a remotely operated vehicle, which is a flying camera. Basically it has a sort of a manipulator arm as well. And that has a 300 meter tether. So they were able to get that back to me because initially they didn't know. They had no idea what had happened to me. They knew my umbilical had broken because they pulled in the other end into the bell. But they didn't know whether I was alive, whether my hat had been ripped off or whatever. So yeah, the footage you see in the film now that's slightly harrowing footage is there. It comes across me at the point where I think I've already fallen unconscious. So I don't remember seeing the ROV or anything like that. For me it was a few minutes of sort of darkness on a seabed, I think it to myself. And then eventually I pass into unconsciousness. And yeah, it took them basically the point at which they regain control of the vessel, which they did by a solution we're all familiar with, which is they turned the computer off and turned it back on again. Norwegian crew, they call that the Swedish solution, apparently. You don't know what you're doing, you just turn it on and off. And yeah, that was 40. I think by the time Dave was able to come and get me, I think 40 minutes had passed, 42 minutes, something like that. So yeah, there's a sort of a 30-odd-minute window where we're assuming I had absolutely nothing to breathe. So yeah, it feels slightly miraculous, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, it means you'll never have to buy your own drinks ever again. If I bring the story out, definitely not. Yeah, that's right. It's me who should be buying them, let's be honest, but yeah. Well, yes, I mean, let's talk about Dave. Was his journey to get back into the bell a straightforward one or was he getting dragged? Yeah, I mean, he was in no small amount of danger himself. He was being dragged uncontrolled by the boat. He's a very, very fit guy, Dave. Sort of a rock climber-type physique, sort of lightweight but very, very fit, and he really, really struggled to get himself back. He didn't actually get back into the bell. He had a little sort of holding stage underneath. So he got himself back to that. I think his umbilical was wrapped all around the bell. And he says, I think he says in the film, doesn't he, that by the time he was back on the stage, he was pretty much exhausted. Yeah, and he was worried about catching his own umbilical and catching himself on structures. They didn't know where they were or where the boat was going and that uncontrolled fashion. They must have been frightening moments for him as well, yeah. How deep down were you? We were 91 meters on the bottom that day, yeah. So what's that in, old money, 270 feet, something like that. It's enough, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's, I guess, a point with, you know, diving the depth doesn't really make much difference. You know, once you're at a point, the point of no return where the surface isn't an option, you know, 90 meters, 150 meters doesn't really make much difference, you know. So we had Duncan who was managing you guys and he's in the bell and he kept his call throughout. But afterwards you could see it visibly chopped him. Yeah. Certainly more than Dave who seemed, I don't know if cool cucumber is the word or sociopath, but... Yeah, yeah. He gets a bit of a bad rap in the film, I think, Dave. Yeah, he comes across. I think they cast us all in a slight role, you know, the documentary. You know, I play sort of the naive new boy, which wasn't entirely true. And Dave plays sociopath. You're absolutely right. He's got a touch of that in him. He's a very, very lovely man, Dave, you know. And we all felt when we watched the film that he got a bit... He gets painted quite bad. He gets a lot of abuse online, you know, despite the fact that he's the one who does all the hard work and does the rescuing and saves my life, you know, really. I say it as an accolade because in that situation you want someone who's emotionless, who's cool, calm, confident and knows what he's doing and is loyal to his dive buddy. A hundred percent. That's a hundred percent right. He's exactly what you want. You don't want a panicker in the water that day and he's not a panicker. He was, you know... Some of the phrases using the film, like, I can't remember how he described it, but, you know, he talked about coming and getting inanimate objects. You know, a lot of that's just editing, you know. We made a shorter version of the film prior to the main blast breath and they, you know, I think he says in that film, he didn't want to treat coming to fetch me, like coming to fetch a colleague or a friend. He wanted to treat it as though he was just picking up an inanimate object because that was easier for him. And, you know, through the beauty of editing, he gets slightly misconstrued in the film that he's a sort of heartless fiend, but he's got a bit of that in him. And as exactly as you say, you need that. And that's what, for me, that was perfect. Yeah, well, it's also this, you know, had you had you have died, this guy Dave and Duncan, but, you know, Dave has to live with this situation for the rest of his life. And earlier you can start compartmentalising it and rationalising it and not going down the emotional route. Yeah. The less programming, negative programming you're going to do in your head. I mean, when Lee died on that beach and someone come to inform us that there's a, you know, they just said, get down to the beach and I thought he's dead. Yeah. And my mate's going, what are you on about? I said, no, he's dead. He's dead. There's three ambulances, four police cars. Either he's dead or he's killed someone else. Right. And that was it. That was just a cut off switch. You might have just went down there. Emotionless. Wasn't pleasant, but, you know, Yeah. People die. People die and life still goes on and you've got to live that life and to have any kind of like permanent trauma. If you have the ability to not have that. Yeah. That's a good thing. Interesting. Because I think there's different, there are, I mean, you're right. I think you're right. I personally think you're right. I think you have to realize these things and you move on because life does go on and you have to find a way to do that, don't you? But, you know, there's also, people argue that you need to sort of, I guess talk through things and process them and deal with them, but rather than shut them away. But I think that's a slightly, that's a different thing. You know, I think you can still deal them in your own way without, but I think you're absolutely right. You have to process. You have to, you know, for me, it was a case of, you know, I'm not pretending I suffered any trauma because I don't really feel I did. Weirdly, I think, you know, you touched on Duncan being quite upset. I think for me, and you might have experienced some of this in your career as well, that, you know, those who had to witness it have suffered far more than those of us who went through it. Certainly from my point of view, you know, for me, it's been a strangely good experience in my life, you know, it's opened a lot of doors and, you know, I sort of had the euphoria, and I'm unconsciously most of it, of course, you know. But those who had to witness that on the screen for sort of, you know, 40 minutes and we're having a process of the fact that they're going to have to deal with that for the rest of their lives, you know. Some of them have suffered, you know, certainly more than I have, yeah. Yes, and also, you know, you probably want someone thinking they're coming to pick, because you want them focused. You know, you don't want them going, oh, God, oh, you know, I mean, they're an incredible danger themselves, aren't they? Yeah, absolutely, I mean, it was. I think the most remarkable thing about the night for me was when you, I listened to sort of the audio recordings of Dive Control and of The Bridge, and it's remarkable how calm everybody is, you know, and what must have been a horribly stressful situation. You know, they're all very, very professional about everything. And, you know, I don't know whether I went back to the cabins and cried afterwards. But at the time, you know, very, very calm and professional and, you know, went through the procedures and everything they had to do to, you know, to affect a rescue really. And it was very, very business-like, you know. Yes, remarkable. And I'd imagine probably for the vast majority, it was probably the closest they come to a death. Yeah, I'm sure for a lot of people, yeah. Yeah, I think it's it. I mean, when you watch that footage, you know, in the film, it's, you know, you see a few minutes of it, but the real thing goes on for sort of 35 minutes and they're sort of twitching stops, you know, and then I'm lying still and that, you know, they must have assumed the worse. So, you know, I don't like to plan it too much because, you know, obviously I'm here and healthy and we're all well and people suffer horrible traumas and deaths every day. And this wasn't one of those, you know, but for that moment, you know, they would have felt that it was. And, yeah, it definitely had a marked effect on them. Quite a few people that I know, yeah. And Dave had quite some strength to literally drag you all the way back to the bell. Then he had to get you into the thing all the time, obviously, assuming the worst. I mean, it's, people use the term miracle about lots of things, but I mean, this truly was miraculous, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. So he, yeah, they sort of lowered the diving bell to a couple of meters off the top of the structure that I was on. And he didn't have that far to pull me up. But with the motion of the boat going up and down, I'm, you know, I'm about six for five and quite, you know, heavier than I should be. And I had no buoyancy at all, you know, and you can see, you get a bit of that in the film, the sense of how difficult that was for him to drag me back those few meters and, you know, there are plenty, I'll tell you right now, there are plenty who wouldn't have managed it. And he said to me himself that, you know, the very last effort to get me onto the bell stage underneath the bell there, if you hadn't got me over on the last go, he was spent basically, he'd have to drop me onto the seabed and start again, you know. And yeah, so he would have to feed me in, but that's one of the many fine margins because it does, you know, I'm not particularly a believer in miracles, but it feels miraculous, you know, we've got sort of theories and ideas of why it's not just surviving for me, it's surviving with, you know, no brain damage, you know, or at least no one's been brave enough to tell me otherwise. That there hasn't been oxygen, you know, you would think 30 minutes with nothing to breathe, at the very least you're going to, you know, the first thing to start dying is your brain, you know, from oxygen deprivation, obviously. And yeah, we got away with that as well. You know, there were sorts of little fine margins, you know, the fact that Dave was able to get me and there and then helped obviously. And you know, I've been down to the Royal Medical Society and spoken there and various hyperbaric conferences and the universal thought while they don't have a definitive answer as to quite how I survived is that the margins would have been infinitesimally small between, you know, if not death then certainly, you know, some kind of damage, you know. So yeah, it does, it feels very much miraculous, yeah. I just tell the scientists, I'm odd. Yeah, that's just it. That's it, that's what it is, I guess. But that's it, I'm not, I'm really not, you know, I'm not a specimen of any kind, you know, either mentally or physically, you know, it's just remarkable that, you know, us as human beings, what we're capable of surviving, you know, and you know, it's things like the fact that I would have been hyperthermically cold very, very quickly. And I don't have any memory of that at all, you know, almost like my body sort of shut down that particular sense because it wasn't necessary or useful at the time, you know. The body's a remarkable thing, isn't it? And yeah, I mean, we are, I always assumed it was the cold. It was the principal saviour, you know, almost put me into stasis, you know, you hear stories of kids, don't you fall in through ice and survive in underwater for long periods because they've just, you know, that body shuts down basically, and you know, in hospitals they certainly used to use that a lot, you know, calling patients, calling their blood, you know, everything just to shut everything down. But I think the true saviour for me, I think I say that in the film, Dono, was the gas that we breathe because, you know, we don't breathe air at that depth. We breathe a heliox mix, so a mixture of helium and oxygen, which while the percentage of oxygen is quite low, I think that night, the normal breathing gas was, I think it was about nine, maybe 9%. I can't remember now, yeah. But it's a lower percentage than you would breathe on the surface, obviously, but because of the pressures involved, we weren't buoying with the science, but the partial pressure means effectively you're breathing higher quantities of oxygen than you would do on the surface. And the bailout gas has a higher percentage again. So I think, you know, that sort of nine minutes wherever it was of high concentrated oxygen or, you know, high percentage of oxygen gas saturated my tissues, affected with oxygen and meant that perhaps, combined with the cold, you know, everything shuts down and the cells, the individual cells had enough oxygen to not die, basically. Yeah, because you had David Blaine, didn't you? He went for the world record at holding his breath and by saturating his body first by hyperventilating. I think it was, I think the video was on YouTube. He then was able to hold his breath for, oh my gosh, it was, I don't know, 20 minutes or something, it was just incredible. You see, Freedivers kind of do the same, there's a name for it, isn't there, when they do that sort of almost hyperventilating on the surface before they go down. Yeah, just to do the same thing, yeah, I think just to oxygenate the system as much as possible. So I suppose it was like that, but times 10 really with the guests I was breathing. So that's the only real logical explanation. You know, it doesn't mean the chances weren't slim and fine, you know. You can see in the footage as well, you can see our water line in my hat, you know, which you assume again was below the oral nasal and didn't drown me, you know. One thing is when Duncan sort of gave me two breaths, just to bring me around, which apparently I came out straight away, but I exhaled very, very, I was violently, you know, a big violent exhalation like my, maybe my tongue had lulled and blocked my throat, you know, something like that, which again might have stopped water going down it, you know, it's difficult because we don't really know, you know, we're all theorizing really, but yeah, I think a lot of, what we had a big dose of bad luck that night, a lot of things went our and my way obviously afterwards, you know, so yeah, lucky boy, that's for sure. I thought he was kissing you. I saw a hashtag on Twitter, I'm not on Twitter at all really, but someone had a hashtag talking about the film and they called it Duncan's Magic Kiss, hashtag Duncan's Magic Kiss. I think I'd do that at the end of the film, he came to my wedding, he came to my wedding, I got married a few months later and he was there and there was another guy there who was this older guy who lives near me and I think on a drunken night out, I planted a kiss on him at some point, just because he hates it. Yeah, so I think I said that on the day, one of only two people in the room gave me a decent kiss on the lips, which he hated as well, but yeah, very grateful to him for doing it. So for me, without doubt, the best bit in the film is just seeing how much they were grinning, once you'd come around and they were just smiling and it just said it, Dave, forget the sociopath thing, that smile just said it all. Yeah, you can see moments there, can't you? That's a lot of the reason the film got made because it's all genuine, 99% of what they use is genuine footage from the night. Yeah, there's some nice moments there. I don't have too many recollections, I can remember reaching over and squeezing Duncan's hand at some point on the way back and they can see in the footage Dave sort of reaching over and grabbing me as well. So yeah, I think a lot of the reason where we've all been fine about it really is that yeah, we had this sort of euphoria of getting away with it really. We were in a great mood when we all got back because we'd survived. I'd obviously kept my life, but they sort of escaped having the trauma as you're talking about as a friend, hopefully a friend anyway. You know, die in front of them and have to carry that the rest of their life. So yeah, it was, it's been a sort of strangely positive experience certainly for me and I think for them to some extent as well, you know. So how did Duncan feel then when he suddenly realised, oh my God, you're alive and your compass meant us? Yeah, I think it was surprised. I don't think anybody was expecting it at all. Yeah, I think it was, he was confused. I think Dave talks about it a bit in the film as well, I think, doesn't he? When he, how does he talk? He says, yeah, you remember he coming back being slightly confused that I was sat there alive. I think we were all a bit bemused. I think he references his children, doesn't he? That he was a bit annoyed with me in some ways. One of his kids had wandered off. Glad that I was alive, but angry with me for having put him through all that. Just probably fair enough. So yeah, I think we're all, yeah, yeah, surprised. I mean, Duncan and I had had a sort of quite a close relationship. You know, he'd almost taken a sort of father figure role on for me on the boat in terms of my training and we'd grown quite close before that. So I think it was, yeah, for him more than anything, it would be a relief, I would like to think anyway. And what were the implications then for, I won't say the name of the company because they're probably fed up with the exposure, but the company that made this computer system, did their shares sort of plummet? Oh yeah, so that was a different company to mine. But yeah, that's right. So yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, the thing is that system exists on thousands, if not tens of thousands of boats around the world. So they were obviously concerned about that. They took the system off the boat and back to their yard in Norway, which is where they're from, and tried to recreate the fault a million times over and were never able to replicate it. So they sort of, you know, they've put in its software essentially since, I believe, to prevent that ever happening again. So they tell me, you know, you have to sort of trust it. It's a bit above my pay grade. But yeah, I don't know actually. Yeah, I think they're probably cornered the market already so they got away with it, you know. And did you get any sort of compensation? No, no, I didn't know. I mean, I, you know, people often either surprise or assume that I got some massive payout. But ultimately, I didn't have anything to be compensated for. I didn't feel, you know, I'm sure if I'd have said, oh, I can't go back to work, they would have had to. But, you know, my concerns at the time, I didn't even cross my mind. You know, I felt I was well and healthy and I was kind of in the infancy of that part of my career. So my concern, which probably suited them in hindsight, was just to get back to work and keep my job really, you know. So no, I didn't know. I think I got a t-shirt at some point. I remember getting called into the boss's office. I did a couple of talks with him afterwards, you know, and I remember him saying when we did a bit of a practice run through, oh, we need to, we need to do something for Chris. We need to do something for Chris. And I thought, oh, here come the keys to the Range Rover, you know, and he took me into his office and I think I got a t-shirt and a little bag or something. Thanks very much. You know, you probably just don't bother next time. But, you know, in honesty, you know, it'd be nice to be sat on a beach in the Caribbean and all that, not working, but... To be honest there, it would just be an omission of guilt on their part, wouldn't it? And then... Exactly, exactly. That just opens up a lawsuit for millions and they're not worried about the millions. They're worried about the damage to their reputation, aren't they? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure my attitude suited them as well, but, you know, I would have done it either way. I didn't really, you know, I don't like to be dishonest, I suppose. And that would, for me, to put in any kind of claim would have been a dishonest one, because I was fine. I felt I could work. I didn't feel traumatized by the experience. So, yeah, that ship sailed now. It might be different now, yeah, with kids and everything, the pay-for is now. But I'm glad I did what I did. You know, I feel like I kept my integrity and rather than go down this, you know... If I'd been injured or I felt like I couldn't work, then that's a different matter, isn't it? That's what, for me, compensation is there for. And, you know, but it would have been a dishonest one for me. Can you tell us a bit, because one of my buddies I've known in many, many years now, who's former Marine too, and went on to work in the North Sea. And he tells me lots of stories about it. Sometimes, Chris, you fuck something up on the sea floor and you worry about it for ages, and then nobody ever finds it. I probably shouldn't be saying this. But he said, when you're in a chamber, the diving bell, or is it the decompression chamber when you're back on the ship? It's probably the decompression chamber back on the ship, I'm guessing. But you're speaking in squeaky voice. And he said, if you have eggs, they're all really flat. Yeah. Is this true? Yeah, so basically, I think people think you live on the seabed, but you don't. You're absolutely right. You live in these decompression chambers on the boat. So on day one of your trip, you'll go in, they'll close the door, and the whole system is pressurised down. So gas is pumped into basically an equivalent working depth. So if you're going to be working at 90 metres, then the system is probably pressurised down to about 85 or something like that. So that means that every day when the diving bell locks on and you climb up and you get sealed away from the system and lowered down in the bell to 85 metres, when you open the door, you've got an equivalence of pressure inside and out, water doesn't come in because of that. And so you've got a dry environment down on the 85 metres and you get out, you die, you put your kit on, you dive the last five or 10 metres down to the seabed, work for six hours and then come back and go back to the system. And what that really means is you're never decompressing and that's what saturation diving is essentially, really, is that you are basically doing one very long, we're limited to 28 days in the North Sea, you're doing one long 28 day dive and you just decompress at the last sort of four or five days because that's how long it takes to decompress from that depth. You do that in the sort of the safety of the system, lining your bunk, reading a book basically as the gas is very slowly let out. So yeah, so you spend most of your time, as you say, living in those chambers and that's probably the most difficult bit of the job actually. The diving is sort of the relief, but living in that environment where you're under pressure and you're living in very close confines with 11 other men is probably the harder bit of the job. So yeah, you're right, because you're under pressure, everything has to be locked in and out through locks basically, so air locks or gas locks. So when we want food, we have to take a menu off and that has to be passed out and your food gets passed in on a little silver tray. Yeah, so anything with bubbles or air pockets is compressed. So if you're to pass a bag of towels in and you don't puncture the bag, just a little plastic bag, that bag of towels will come in, the gas will be compressed and you could probably kill somebody with it. It's like a rock when it comes in and equally more dangerous is when you put things out if you forget to take the lid off something, let's say a jar of coffee and you send it out with a lid on and the gas in there will expand as it comes out rapidly and it will explode. So yeah, it's a funny place to live. You're on camera all the time, you have to ask permission to have the toilet flushed and that kind of thing. It's a strange place to live, yeah. Do you exercise down there? A little bit, yeah. So you're obviously exercising when you're diving, you're working for six hours and that's your exercise for the day really, but yeah, we keep a few weights in there and you're really supposed to avoid exercising when you're decompressing, it's not encouraged. But yeah, it's a long time for people to be in there and not do anything. So we used to have an exercise bike in there, I don't think it's in there anymore, but yeah, you can do a little bit, yeah. Do you have videos and DVDs and stuff? Yeah, we do these days we do. We sort of a TV that can be beamed in through a porthole. Yeah, that's what I thought. We've got screens, and we do have screens now that can survive in there, yeah. So we can get a bit of TV, a very, very poor internet sometimes so you can sort of do a little bit, but yeah, you're taking plenty of books and plenty of movies and talk a lot rubbish. When you're doing your public speaking, Chris, what's the most often thing that people, the audience ask you? People, yeah, I get from real standard people, they want to know about the practical side of it, you know, you touched on there, so how you get your toilet flushed and how you get fed. But in terms of the incident, people come in three categories, I think they sort of, there's the religious contingent who want to know if I saw the light and that kind of thing. People want to know how I survived, and I don't really have an answer, a really good answer for that either. And people often want to know, I get a lot of people who have suffered real trauma or we've lost people, and they feel that maybe, I don't really have some insight into death, as I've looked it in the eye and come back. Then I just feel a little bit guilty about answering that because like I said, I don't like to hammer what I went through and pretend that I've suffered something that I haven't just for the sake of showmanship or whatever. But I get people who just looking for comfort a lot of the time and a word of reassurance that the process of death, which for me, not that I didn't die, but that process of the last minutes were not desperately unpleasant and the passing over into unconsciousness wasn't an unpleasant experience of that, had been my death, then it wasn't a terrible way to go. You know, you're able to offer a little bit of reassurance to some people and yeah. This is nice, you know, I suppose. What's this Empire magazine? Free Stars, what's all that about? It's disgrace, isn't it? I don't see that. I don't know if I've seen that one. Free Star review, what, three out of five? I'm hoping it's five. Better not be bloody ten. Yeah, it's funny. It mostly got really good reviews, but yeah, there's one or two, I don't know, it's a matter of taste, isn't it? I suppose, yeah, I don't know. I find it hard to judge the film. I think when I first saw it, I wasn't really that keen on it. I think because you're hyper-analyzed, because you're in it. And let's be totally honest, you're only worried about how you come across, you know, you don't want to come across your way. So there was a couple of bits in the film, I wasn't like that and the way it's edited doesn't sound naturally like me speaking, but I've seen it so many times now. I've grown quite fond of it and you realise what they were trying to do and your bum looked a bit getting that suit. Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. Exactly that. But yeah, it seems to, it seems, you know, I get, I still get messages, you know, on a daily basis really from people who've seen it and they seem to be universally positive and people seem to, yeah, it's an emotional experience, isn't it? I think they're like it for different reasons, I guess. Yes, for our friends at home, I'll put a link below so you can get a copy of the DVD. You probably get fed up with being asked this, but are you going to write a book, Chris? Yeah, I am actually, yeah. People don't ask me that, but yeah, I sort of undernailed about it for a while. Again, I didn't really want to, I don't want to make too much of it, but I quite like writing anyway. So yeah, there's one in the pipeline, I suppose. Yeah, whether it gets published or not, it's a different matter, but yeah, we've got a few people interested. So hopefully watch this space, yeah. Yeah, if I can help you with that at all, Phil, you know, you've only got to ask, mate. Very kind. Well, I think when it comes out, I suppose I'll be, I'll be on the show with the other foot, I'll be trying to sell it, won't I? Yeah, that's so... Friends, yeah. Welcome to our world, eh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least. Yes. And so, final thing, Chris, what do we learn by this? Yeah, that's a good question. What do we learn? I don't, like I said, I don't feel I've had any epiphany, you know, and we've learned a work, we learned, you know, practical things through what happened. We've changed a few things at work that we learned through the experience of having to rescue somebody. What we found the biggest, sort of the biggest thing we learned, I guess, and that's applicable to other people, was that we felt we, we felt we knew everything about rescuing people. We do it with something as a drill that we do all the time. And yet we still found things out on that night that we'd never learned before. So what we realized was that our drills were, we felt were pretty good, were not realistic enough, you know, we weren't doing it as if it was the real thing and people were helping people to rescue them, you know, for that sort of thing. So, yeah, realism in our drills is probably the biggest, biggest lesson we learned on a, you know, a broader picture since that night. But yeah, in terms of human beings and all that, you know, what remarkable things we are, I think is what you learn, isn't it, that we can survive all sorts of things. And I would say don't give up, you know, on yourself at any point, because there is, it's remarkable what we can extricate ourselves from, you know, mentally and physically, isn't it? So, yeah, and embrace life, because it can be cut off at any point as we all know. How long do you think you'll keep diving, Paul? I've just stopped, actually, yeah, I stopped this year, and so I've transferred to, I'm training to be a supervisor, so the role of the guy in the film, Craig was the supervisor that night, so I now sit in a comfy chair and try and tell the others what to do, including Duncan, which is ridiculous, because, you know, it's a far more experience than I am, but that's one of the cheeky bits of the job, yeah, telling people who are probably better at their job than you are how to do it, yeah. So that's it, I've stopped now, I think. Brilliant, brilliant. Folks at home, if you want to book this incredible gentleman for public speaking, I'll put a link for Chris's website below. Thank you. Or a Zoom chat. Don't be shy, because what an amazing, amazing story. Chris, stay on the line so I can thank you properly when I hit the record button off, but for the purposes of the tape, massive thank you mate, I just thoroughly enjoyed this chat. Me too, it's been a real, really kind of people are interested in the stories, so thank you and thanks for your time yesterday, I've enjoyed it as well. You're welcome. To our friends at home, massive love to you all. Please look after yourselves, if you can chuck us a like, that would be wonderful. And we'll see you next time.