## The Near Miss That Preceded the Rescue
Okene’s account of the hours before the rescue includes a detail that the prompt for this article specifically identified as significant, and that later AP reporting specifically highlighted: he came very close to not being found.
The dive team made at least one pass through the area near where Okene was sheltering before van Heerden’s eventually successful encounter. Okene heard the divers. He heard the sound of paddling and the evidence of activity outside the hull. He banged on the walls with a hammer to attract attention. But the divers were in a different part of the wreck, or moving too fast, and they did not register the hammering.
He heard the sounds fade. He did not know if they would come back.
Okene has described the experience of seeing a diver’s light during one pass — possibly an earlier pass by van Heerden himself — and trying to reach him. He was at the far end of the cabin. The diver entered and moved through too quickly. By the time Okene swam out into the dark water toward the light, the diver was already leaving.
He returned to his air pocket.
The second encounter was the successful one. Okene swam out again and reached the diver — van Heerden on what may have been a return pass — and tapped him on the neck from behind. The tap on the neck, from behind, in the dark, by something in what should have been a space containing only the dead, was what produced the startled reaction that the helmet camera recorded.