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I was on holiday just north of Dahab, staying at The Canyon dive site near the Blue Hole, the week after the incident. As I understood it the two divers were British PADI Divemasters just about to start their IDC. As it happens the IDC was cancelled on account of their deaths at the Blue Hole. They were on single Aluminium 12 ltr set ups and had been down to 110m. The bottom of the hole slopes out seaward through a massive arch starting at 60m to 130m before finally dropping off into the Abyss. The Blue Hole must have one of the highest death rates in the world as far as dive sites go. I stay in the area on average every six months for a week, and it seems everytime I go there, people have just died either at the Blue Hole or The Canyon sites. Why? The reasons are endless, but overall there is a sick culture there, evolved from Dahab's drug reputation. Young back packers have for years taken in Dahab on their route round the Middle East to chill out as such. Many of them end up staying there for months, some never leave... alive. Mix in a little SCUBA diving with this and you have the perfect nightmare. I can only imagine they learn a little diving, experience narcosis and think this is the way to go once they're board of just smoking pot or whatever. There is most definitely a focus on "how deep did you go?". After a dive out there everyone always asks us "how deep did you go?" probably on account of my using twin independent Ali's Hogarth rig AUL light etc. When I reply with something like 35m they look back at me incredulously convinced that we must have been further, they just don't get it. Now the best bit. Every time we go to stay there we visit the Blue Hole for one morning only, once you've dived in it the once its pretty boring. However there is a prettier site just round the corner called "Bells" on account of some rock formations. Whilst kitting up for the dive one of the PADI Instructors I know there came over all excited. He proceeded to tell us that two divers kitting up near us were going to dive to 110m in the Blue Hole. This is just one week after the two aforementioned deaths! Business as usual I guess. My friend went on to explain that one of them is a TDI Extended Range instructor and Trimix diver, the guy he's taking down is a tourist from Russia. I commented that I assumed they would be using Trimix and had support plans in place etc. "Oh no, they're doing it on air." I was horrified, but what could we have done? Oh I should mention there is no helicopter service to the pot in this region, and it takes 2.5 hours from the Blue Hole to the chamber in Sharm El Sheikh by knackered taxi. My diving companion and I went off and made our dive, coming back over the hole with a little decompression commitment, and encountered these two carrying out decompression. I've never seen anything like it. The instructor was hanging at about 9m on his deco bag, the other guy was hanging on to him looking really uncomfortable, the twin set he had on his back looked like some cobbled together Zeagle arrangement, his buoyancy didn't look at all right. We both passed near them and checked they were OK, I remember making eye to eye contact with the instructor, peoples eyes can look funny through diving masks, his were glazed as if he where on another planet, something haunts me about this as I feel like I've looked in the eyes of the grim reaper. My diving companion was a little closer than me, and later told me he had managed to read 111m on the Russians old style Aladdin computer. Then to top it all off, down came a snorkeller with a cylinder and regs flayling everywhere and handed it to the Russian who looked like he didn't know what to do with it. Ah that's the support set up then I remember thinking. Our computers cleared and we elected to get out the water. We were stunned and didn't want to be around any more to watch. I made some enquiries about this guy, and guess what, apparently he was on the boat when Rob Palmer died! His name is something like "Amah", apparently he is Syrian. He has been in Dahab for some months trying to make money buy taking people deep on air. Most of the responsible dive centre managers have told him to sling his hook. Shame he couldn't take the initiative and start getting mix up there as the place needs it. Later I spoke to my instructor friend, and he related a conversation he had had some time ago with this Amah guy. Apparently he talks in riddles as if he is some kind of monk/guru, about going deep and breaking a theoretical umbilical cord between yourself and the rest of the world, if you're meant to come back you will, if you're not you wont! Well that's all I know, sorry to go on a bit, but I'm getting fucked off with people like him ruining it for the likes of me out there and killing those who maybe don't know any better. Best regards Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: G. Irvine Sent: Saturday, December 06, 1997 2:08 PM To: Ingemar Lundgren Cc: techdiver@aquanaut.com Subject: Re: Deep air kills two more Igge - can you find out for us what kind of "instructors" these guys were, and what agency, svp? We need a good scorecard and body count for year end. We already have a a clear frontrunner, but one never knows. Ingemar Lundgren wrote: > > Two divers, apparently Instructors died 2 weeks ago in Dahab, Sinai. > They were found at between 80 and 100m of depth. > The current trend in diving here in Europe seems to be deep Air and much > of it, i think is thanks to Brett Gilliam and his so called training > agency. Publishing books like deep diving, where if you read it, you get > the impression that Trimix is unnecessary trouble and that deep air, if > you are mentally prepared and trained and all that bullshit could be > done safely, is very dangerous. And he goes on in magazine articles with > public statements like, only a few in the world can handle air at 90m is > so stupid that i cant believe my eyes. We have a diving group here in > Sweden called "dirty deep divers" that dives to 80m on air and sticks a > name tag in the bottom, i mean what is this stupidity coming from. > Someone must have a very bad influence on our sport and i think Gilliam > has a large part of the blame. You may say that everyone has the right > to shoot him self in the head, but promoting this dangerous activity as > being safe is extremely irresponsible. > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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