Divers who took a current liveaboard journey on a ship operated by Dive Professional Liveaboard, proprietor of Sea Story – which sank on Monday with the lack of not less than 4 lives and with seven folks nonetheless lacking – have spoken of main security failings on board their vessel.
Chatting with Sky Information, an ‘skilled diver’ who gave his title solely as Timothy, stated that divers on board the Dive Professional Liveaboard Sea Pearl, sister ship to Sea Story, had issues about ‘boat security requirements’.
Chief amongst these had been the dearth of a life jacket drill and ‘no centralised system or satisfactory communication’ about the best way to increase the alarm within the occasion of an emergency.
‘The Egyptian authorities has strong security requirements, however there’s little or no enforcement,’ the diver advised Sky Information. ‘We weren’t advised the best way to deploy the life rafts or something like that.’
The diver stated that passengers weren’t requested to familiarise themselves with their life jackets, and one other couple of their group reportedly stated that just one life jacket was current of their two-person cabin.
He added that when the couple went to ask for an additional one, a crewmember advised them ‘It’s effective, we have now loads of them within the crew quarters.’
The diver stated there was ‘no security plan or drill’ – also called a muster drill – after they boarded the boat and so they took it upon themselves to find Sea Pearl’s emergency hatch as no person had proven them the best way to open it.
‘There was no plan of escape,’ he advised Sky Information. ‘We discovered [the hatch] ourselves. It’s solely roughly a metre sq. – so it might be just one particular person at a time.
‘There was no emergency drill in any respect. They only stated there are life jackets in all of the cabins, but it surely seems that wasn’t the case.’
A second diver named by Sky Information as ‘James’, who was on the identical journey, stated that ‘Security didn’t really feel paramount. It didn’t really feel prefer it was a very powerful factor to Dive Professional, working the Sea Pearl.
‘We arrived on the boats and on the Saturday, no person sort of stated, “Hello, I’m such and such”. They principally simply guided us in direction of a person with a bank card machine. They wished their port charges paying earlier than we did anything and another extras that we would have liked.’
Sky Information stated it had approached Dive Professional Liveaboards for remark, however had thus far not obtained a response.
Sea Story is the second liveaboard owned by Dive Professional Liveaboard to have been misplaced in 2024. A German lady is presumed lifeless after going lacking when the MY Sea Legend caught hearth through the early hours of twenty-two February, sinking shortly afterwards.
In an interview posted on German journal Taucher’s YouTube channel, divers on board Sea Legend when it caught hearth stated that the state of affairs was ‘very chaotic’; not one of the crew or guides took duty for the evacuation; one of many zodiac’s engines was not working and the opposite was taking up water – and there have been no life vests, no lights and no emergency flares.
Sea Story’s tragic loss brings the overall variety of Egyptian liveaboards misplaced this 12 months to 5, following the sinkings of following the sinkings of Nouran earlier in November, Seaduction in October and Exocet in June.
In 2023, three British divers had been killed when the MV Hurricane – one of many Purple Sea’s hottest liveaboards – caught hearth close to Elphinstone Reef. Only a few months earlier, the MV Carlton Queen capsized close to Sha’ab Abu Nuhas.
Associated tales
