A rescue diver who pulled bodies from the wreck of the Thai pleasure boat that sank in Phuket has been describing the horror of what he saw. He told CGTN's Martin Lowe it was his worst moment in 30 years as a diver.

Dave Wilson was a sergeant in the British Army and a construction worker in the Middle East. But he says nothing prepared him for the horrors he saw after volunteering as a rescue diver, retrieving bodies from the Phuket boat disaster. His worst moment; when his buddy diver passed him the body of a small child.

DAVE WILSON RESCUE DIVER "Mike passed this little boy to me, he was the same as my son, about two and a half years-old, small child's life jacket, wearing a little pair of socks – it was just like looking at my son, it was horrible. As he was coming up I said a little prayer in Thai – that's what I'm used to now it's the Buddhist way - then I held on to the boy, gave him a cuddle."

Next came the boy's lifeless mother.

DAVE WILSON RESCUE DIVER "Then the next, the second of the pair that was being passed up to me, was a Chinese lady. We actually found that that lady was the child's mother and they'd been found on the wreck arm in arm with the mother's arms wrapped around her son. That was pretty bad."

He says all of the rescue divers – Chinese, Thai and Western – treated the bodies with utmost respect.

DAVE WILSON RESCUE DIVER "We were treating these people as if they were our own families and it was tough."

MARTIN LOWE PHUKET "Many of those who died were wearing lifejackets, but there are two types. Full lifejackets will keep an unconscious person's head out of the water, simple vests do not - and putting on a lifejacket before leaving the boat can make the situation worse."

DAVE WILSON RESCUE DIVER "A lot of the boats out here – there are life jackets provided but they're more of the wraparound type, the vest type - and a lot of the bodies that were found were floating face down. In the vessel itself if you're wearing a lifejacket inside when a boat is going down you're going to be floating up to the ceiling and you physically can't pull yourself down to get through the exit. In this case, I understand that the Phoenix went down stern first, which meant that anybody that was in the cabin where all the bodies were found, they were trapped, couldn't get out."

Like many here, this diver hopes the tragedy will prompt an urgent review of boat safety. Martin Lowe, CGTN, Phuket.