On July 14, the instructors were teaching diving skills to 12 foreign tourists. Six students were swimming with masks and snorkels, six more were practicing scuba diving. Then, while the tourists were resting, the instructors decided to dive on their own. According to eyewitnesses, they were going to descend to a depth of 120 meters, which, as experts say, is “an enormous depth even for very experienced divers.” True, the Gazeta.Ru source noted, it is possible that, speaking of 120 meters, the instructors “simply decided to show off in front of the girls.” Now no one will ever know: the divers never surfaced.
After the tourists reported their disappearance, search operations were launched. The search continued for two days with the involvement of boats and helicopters from rescue services. On Monday, the search was officially discontinued, as there was no hope left of finding the deceased.
The details of what happened are now being investigated by the police and the Egyptian Association of Underwater Activities. The cause of the instructors' death is not yet known, but according to divers, most likely it was a “banal nitrogen narcosis.” “Such a dive is like Russian roulette. During a dive, oxygen in the blood accelerates, while nitrogen remains. And the greater the depth, the stronger the nitrogen intoxication. Whether you will manage to return to the surface is a matter of chance,” a Gazeta.Ru source said.
In any case, it is obvious that this time the dive was carried out in violation of safety rules. According to a Gazeta.Ru source, the divers submerged without a safety line and using ordinary air, whereas special deep-sea mixtures, such as oxygen and helium, are always used for such depths. They did this for the first time, and it is not entirely clear why. Divers say that most likely it was simply an experiment. Moreover, to use such mixtures, one must undergo special training.
At what point during the dive the divers died remains unknown. But most likely, it happened during ascent. The rise in deep-sea diving must always follow a special schedule – with decompression stops at certain intervals to avoid the so-called decompression sickness. If the decompression had been done correctly, the ascent would have taken the divers quite a long time, since they did not have special decompression equipment.
The Typhoon diving center, where the instructors worked, confirmed the information about their death but declined to comment. The future activities of the center will now depend on the results of the investigation.
The Abu Ramada reef – an underwater wall of vertical rocks overgrown with corals, where the tragedy occurred – is considered an unfavorable place for diving. On April 14, 2005, three experienced divers from St. Petersburg drowned there. The bodies of two were never found. The cause was a violation of deep-water diving rules. All three were members of the “Black Diver” club.
Anastasia MAKRYASHINA.
Gazeta.Ru