[HN Gopher] Trapped in the dark for 35 hours - Red Sea dive-boat...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Trapped in the dark for 35 hours - Red Sea dive-boat survivors tell
       of escapes
        
       Author : nradov
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2025-01-15 05:35 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | interroboink wrote:
       | Reminds me of this older story, of Harrison Okene, who was
       | trapped in a capsized boat at the bottom of the ocean for 3 days:
       | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/26/i-survi...
       | 
       | video of his rescue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um1ym9u8XaA
       | 
       | Randomly, the next year, he rescued his friend when their car
       | goes off a bridge into water. He later became a diver!
        
         | WillPostForFood wrote:
         | Or a mini Poseidon Adventure
        
         | triyambakam wrote:
         | Thank you for sharing about Okene, what a great story.
        
       | MichaelZuo wrote:
       | How could 3 adults, even lying perfectly still, not use up all
       | the oxygen in that air pocket within 35 hours?
       | 
       | I thought human beings needed several cubic meters of fresh
       | oxygen (at 1 atm) per hour...
        
         | _hyn3 wrote:
         | Not at 1atm. The air was pressurized.
        
           | nwellinghoff wrote:
           | How is that? It was at surface pressure and then rolled over.
        
             | K0balt wrote:
             | If the booyancy of the trapped air was a significant factor
             | in the boat not sinking, then the air would have been at
             | pressures over 1atm.
             | 
             | Put a barometer in an empty, upside-down cup. Force the
             | upside down cup 1/2 way down into the water, trapping the
             | air inside.
             | 
             | The barometer will be at the sea pressure of the bottom of
             | the cup.
        
           | russell_h wrote:
           | It doesn't sound to me like the boat actually sank. In the
           | article it mentioned that they heard the rescue helicopter
           | from within. Wouldn't that imply that the pressure inside
           | would be one atmosphere? Am I thinking about the physics of
           | this wrong?
        
             | duskwuff wrote:
             | Sound does carry remarkably well through water - but you're
             | right. The ship capsized, but the hull held enough air that
             | it stayed afloat.
        
             | BurningFrog wrote:
             | It was floating upside down.
             | 
             | There is a picture towards the end of the story.
        
             | shellfishgene wrote:
             | Mostly, the weight of the boat pulling down would compress
             | the air bubble a bit, probably not very much though.
        
             | madaxe_again wrote:
             | The pressure of any trapped gas will be equivalent to the
             | depth of the lowest level containing air - so if the bottom
             | of your air bubble is a meter below sea level, your
             | pressure will be 1.1 atm.
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | You got me wondering and I thought maybe there was some kind of
         | gas diffusion where carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean
         | water instead of building up in the enclosed space, and finding
         | the most closely related stack exchange question I think I'm
         | satisfied with this answer:
         | 
         |  _probably that four-foot bubble communicated with a larger
         | volume or air under the hull of the boat - and that 's the most
         | reasonable explanation of this miraculous survival._
         | 
         | When picturing it we might assume the rest of the boat is
         | flooded and this pocket of air is all that remained but that
         | may not be the case.
         | 
         | https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67970/surviving-...
        
           | gunian wrote:
           | Mr Nimbus gave them gills to save them and wiped their memory
           | :)
        
             | sellmesoap wrote:
             | Mr nimbus also controls the police!
        
           | relistan wrote:
           | They were in the engine room. The engine would have both air
           | intake and exhaust systems. There was potentially some
           | portion of one or both systems interacting with other air
           | pockets.
        
         | Aerroon wrote:
         | It might be enough. Google says a human needs 300-550 liters of
         | oxygen a day. That equals to about 6.8-12.4 cubic meters of air
         | for the 3 of them for 36 hours.
         | 
         | The space does seem like it could be large enough to hold that
         | much air, especially if it's compressed a little.
        
         | pcrh wrote:
         | In this case, the boat was floating, albeit upside down. So the
         | volume of air trapped must have been sufficient to keep a 44
         | metre boat afloat; i.e. not a trivial amount.
        
       | rwmj wrote:
       | If I remember it right, Mythbusters did the "sinking boat will
       | pull you under" and found it was a myth?
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | they busted it with a 9 ton boat but now I'm unconvinced
         | because they did demonstrate the effect with a large weight
         | dropping straight down in a pool, so what effect was that?!
         | They were testing Titanic myths and didn't touch on the fact
         | that Titanic famously dropped like a stone!
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/rvU_dkKdZ0U
        
         | p_j_w wrote:
         | Mythbusters is not rigorous. You'd be foolish to bet your life
         | on the outcomes of any of their experiments.
        
       | rurban wrote:
       | Furniture moving to one side on the top deck sounds most
       | plausible to me.
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | What kind of furniture is heavy enough to cause that? It'd have
         | to be tons of weight, and anything that isn't chairs and tables
         | would be bolted down.
        
           | rurban wrote:
           | You see that the ship was already very top-heavy and
           | unstable. 200-400kg would have been enough, with 1.5m waves
           | and a stupid captain.
        
       | throeurir wrote:
       | > But Lucianna is critical of the fact the Egyptian navy had to
       | rely on volunteers. "We waited 35 hours. I don't understand how
       | there are no divers on the Egyptian military boats."
       | 
       | Why should divers risk their life to save anyone?! The boat was
       | unstable, going inside would be dangerous! Some people are
       | adrenaline junkies, and will volunteer for such thing, but you
       | can not expect professionals to do that!
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Is that how it works when military personnel is called to
         | assist in disaster rescue?
         | 
         | "Seems kind of dangerous. I'm a professional, I won't go there,
         | let's wait for amateur volunteers to show up."
        
           | throeurir wrote:
           | They did assist. They saved many lives, but waited until it
           | was safe for them! It is not their job to increase number of
           | victims!
        
         | petre wrote:
         | Why would the military navy or coast guard risk their lives to
         | save some tourists from a sinking boat, when they could
         | professionally watch from a distance through binoculars? /s
         | 
         | Maybe because it's part of their job drscription?
        
           | throeurir wrote:
           | No, their primary job is to protect borders!
        
         | Cthulhu_ wrote:
         | Is this sarcasm? I hope it's sarcasm.
        
         | albumen wrote:
         | Professional first responders risk their lives all the time to
         | help others. Rescue situations are nearly always risky by their
         | very nature.
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | I would bet there is a gulf of difference in equipment and
           | training between rich countries' first responders and
           | personnel on some random navy ship in poor and curruption-
           | ridden Egypt.
        
           | throeurir wrote:
           | Real life is not Paw Patrol! Watch latest interviews with
           | firefighters from California!
           | 
           | Rescuers already put themselves into dangerous situation
           | (operation on stormy sea). But at some point risks are too
           | great, and there is no point to pile up more bodies. Or
           | demand more rescuers, to rescue original rescuers...
        
         | itsoktocry wrote:
         | > _Why should divers risk their life to save anyone?_
         | 
         | Yeah, why should anyone do anything to help anyone else unless
         | it's in their self-interest!
         | 
         | No wonder we live in such a low-trust society...
        
           | Filligree wrote:
           | Our society isn't low-trust. It may not be as high trust as
           | Scandinavia, but until you've lived in a real low-trust
           | society you don't know how bad it can get.
        
           | keybored wrote:
           | We? That was a Belgian asking about search and rescue in
           | Egypt.
           | 
           | Yeah go to country on a different continent and they might
           | not have great search and rescue operations. Like how would
           | you know.
        
         | batch12 wrote:
         | Some people are just wired differently. It's the difference
         | between the person who will get out of their own car and help
         | someone push theirs or the person who will intercede when
         | someone is being assaulted instead of walking past. It's not
         | adrenaline, it's the need to help. Luckily for others, some of
         | us have this flaw.
        
           | throeurir wrote:
           | About 30% of deaths in cave diving are rescuers. This is very
           | similar situation!
        
         | wbl wrote:
         | "You have to go out. You don't have to come back"- Coast Guard
         | unofficial motto.
        
       | brian-armstrong wrote:
       | > Outside the boat, Sarah, Hissora and the others who had jumped
       | off eventually found the two life rafts, which had deployed after
       | the sinking. As they clambered on board, they saw the boat's
       | captain and a number of other crew members were already there.
       | 
       | > "There should be some supplies in here," Sarah remembers one of
       | the other guests saying. All the people we spoke to recall a
       | safety briefing mentioning that the life rafts had food and water
       | in them - but they did not, the BBC were told.
       | 
       | > "We found a torch, but again it didn't have any batteries. We
       | didn't have any water or any food," Sarah says. "There were
       | flares, but they had already been used."
       | 
       | > Sarah also says of the three blankets on board the raft, one
       | had been taken by the captain for himself, leaving one for the
       | rest of the crew and another for the guests. "We ripped it up and
       | huddled together," says Sarah.
       | 
       | Absolutely disgraceful behavior from the captain here. This is
       | not a person who should be entrusted with a houseplant, let alone
       | the wellbeing of any number of people on board that vessel.
        
         | jajko wrote:
         | If you've ever been to that country, or any similar country,
         | you would notice that real professional competence across whole
         | society is scarce, and most tourism industry is just barely
         | faking it in terms of security and professionalism. Or to put
         | it in different words - don't do extreme sports there, safety
         | net is very thin.
         | 
         | Deadly diving accidents are common there too, mostly due to
         | lack of professionalism of instructors, either locals or for
         | some reason russians.
        
           | curiousgal wrote:
           | Generalize much? How many duck boat sinkings took the lives
           | of tourists in the US? Were you also so keen to criticise
           | American society as a whole and "similar countries"?
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | Not the OP, but his generalization about North Africa is
             | spot on.
             | 
             | It is one of the few regions that regressed
             | civilizationally since Antiquity. Zero advanced exports,
             | lots of tyranny and dysfunction, natives vote with their
             | feet by the millions, and no one in their sane mind _moves_
             | there.
             | 
             | I don't particularly care about praising the US, a country
             | I have never been to, but if you are trying to put some
             | sort equivalence between Egypt and the US, you are deluding
             | yourself. Quality of institutions in those two places ise
             | mostly incomparable.
             | 
             | (The SF homeless situation may be an exception. Yeah, that
             | could be North Africa, only with much more money burned on
             | futile schemes to alleviate the problem.)
        
               | selimthegrim wrote:
               | Morocco and Tunisia don't seem terrible. But you're also
               | neglecting the effect of climate change since antiquity
               | on agriculture there.
        
               | inglor_cz wrote:
               | After 1948, the ancient communities of Greeks, Jews and
               | Armenians were driven out of Alexandria by the new Arab
               | nationalist government.
               | 
               | Given that these were the most educated and globally
               | connected people in the country, Egypt shot itself in the
               | foot in a way that is probably impossible to evaluate.
        
               | selimthegrim wrote:
               | In violent agreement- unfortunately, they were identified
               | with the British occupation/administration.
               | 
               | See also:
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ireland_Craig
        
             | shellfishgene wrote:
             | There are of course professional and competent people in
             | Egypt, and I've worked with many. However, there is very
             | stiff competition in the tourism sector, education in
             | workers is low, regulations that exist are mostly only used
             | to elicit bribes by officials, so all corners that can be
             | cut, are.
        
             | nmstoker wrote:
             | Based on this list, it was 34 fatalities from three duck
             | boat sinkings:
             | 
             | https://www.arnolditkin.com/blog/injury/dangerous-waters-
             | a-s...
             | 
             | There were other fatalities but in different circumstances,
             | mainly on land.
             | 
             | A quick Google turns up over a thirteen hundred dead in
             | sinking incidents off Egypt in the last 20 years. Looks
             | like Libya can't be far behind. They're in a completely
             | different league and whilst generalisations can seen
             | unpalatable it does seem tied to a careless approach to
             | safety (as confirmed by all the mentions of safety
             | equipment failure in the various incidents)
        
               | fwipsy wrote:
               | Tangent: this article contains the claim regarding DUKWs
               | on D-Day: "Only one boat made it to the beach--the rest
               | sank, taking soldiers and supplies with them." From what
               | I can find this seems to be highly inaccurate and while
               | there were some sinkings, DUKW boats at D-Day seem to be
               | generally considered to be successful. This error is
               | egregious enough to call the author's overall
               | trustworthiness into question for me.
        
             | StefanBatory wrote:
             | Generalization sucks but you can't say it's not true.
             | 
             | I'm from Eastern Europe and I'll say that in many aspects
             | Western society _is_ better than us, even if it 's already
             | way better than after the fall of the Soviet occupation.
             | 
             | It sucks but it is what it is.
        
           | YZF wrote:
           | I have dived in the red sea dozens of times over decades.
           | There are many solid dive operations. It's probably at least
           | a notch or two above the rest of (edit: Egyptian) society
           | since it's a bit of a bubble that works mostly with
           | foreigners. Still not up to western standards but also not as
           | bad as you make it sound. It's one of the world's most
           | popular diving destinations and incident rates aren't that
           | high. There are many good instructors but you do have to be
           | more careful.
           | 
           | These days there are a lot of Russians due to the war with
           | Ukraine I imagine some of them have found work in the dive
           | industry. The last time I visited was 2 years ago and there
           | were certainly a lot of Russians but I didn't dive with them.
           | 
           | EDIT: I generally dislike Egypt, everyone smokes, an
           | oppressive government. Third world. I'm not sure I'll go
           | diving there again. But my experience with boat diving has
           | been good, that's the only part of Egypt I like ;) I've had
           | dives in Hawaii that felt less safe with instructors chasing
           | people that bolt to the surface and other near misses and
           | generally questionably run operations. I think the key in
           | these third world countries is to chose specific operators.
        
         | shellfishgene wrote:
         | It seems not much has changed after the Red Sea Agressor dive
         | boat burned down in 2020 killing one guest.
        
         | inglor_cz wrote:
         | Sadly, absolutely nothing and no one in Egypt can be trusted.
         | It is even worse that the former Soviet Bloc where I grew up,
         | and where you always had to divide your expectations of
         | competence, functionality, compliance etc. by, say, three.
         | (Nowadays, two.)
         | 
         | This story is still better than it could be - I would expect
         | the life rafts to be completely unmaintained and to sink
         | immediately. Perhaps they were sturdy enough to survive years
         | of neglect.
         | 
         | You can expect that the investigation will be an exercise in
         | bureaucratic hush-up, too. If losing face is worse than death,
         | death is the preferred outcome. Especially if it is someone
         | else's death.
         | 
         | The Red Sea is beautiful, but caveat emptor. Ironically, Saudi
         | Arabia may outcompete Egypt soon when it comes to seaside
         | tourism. Saudis are a lot more competent when it comes to
         | providing Western levels of service, and the current prince is
         | ditching Islamic limitations real fast.
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | _Saudis are a lot more competent when it comes to providing
           | Western levels of service, and the current prince is ditching
           | Islamic limitations real fast._
           | 
           | Only because they mostly don't do the work themselves ;)
        
             | inglor_cz wrote:
             | True, a lot is done by foreigners; but even organizing
             | someone else to provide reliable service to you is a
             | nontrivial competence.
             | 
             | Plenty of rich places work like that. Already ancient
             | Athens had their metoics.
        
         | madaxe_again wrote:
         | In Egypt, when you are in a position of power - for instance,
         | captain, CEO, president - you aren't actually responsible for
         | anything. It's more of a sinecure, where you are there to be
         | honoured and pampered by your underlings.
         | 
         | This seems to be a universal law there - any time I've done
         | business there's been some lavish lunch with the CEO while he
         | talks about his horses, and then negotiations with Farid from
         | accounts.
         | 
         | So... the captain in this case is just abiding by Egyptian
         | customs. He is, in his and his crew's estimation, the most
         | important person on the boat, and is to be protected at all
         | costs.
        
           | ty6853 wrote:
           | It's quite interesting as other Islamic countries I've been
           | to will guard guests with their life and will basically
           | starve themselves to make sure you eat. Protection of guests
           | is a pillar of the culture and religion in most the Middle
           | East. If you are anywhere east of Egypt and you knock on a
           | door you can pretty much bet that unless you're arrested or
           | killed immediately you are absolutely safe.
        
             | steveBK123 wrote:
             | Pretty big caveat on that last sentence..
        
             | YZF wrote:
             | I don't think the divers on a dive boat are considered
             | guests of the captain. So yes the custom exists but it's
             | very nuanced.
        
       | shellfishgene wrote:
       | _After several hours trapped in the air pocket, the dive guide,
       | Youssef, wanted to try to swim through the boat, but Lucianna and
       | Christophe persuaded him not to. "Stay with us because they are
       | going to come to get our bodies, so they will find us," Lucianna
       | recalls telling him._
       | 
       | An odd decision, I would have thought he was a good diver, so
       | presumeably also a decent free diver, knew the boat well, could
       | alert rescuers to the trapped people, and would not use up oxygen
       | when gone from the bubble.
        
         | relistan wrote:
         | Presumably they had no idea if the boat was on the bottom of
         | the sea or not, and at what depth.
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | Still, rationally thinking, which is presuming a lot in the
           | situation, I can't find any real advantage to the two
           | tourists of having the dive guide not try.
        
             | MaKey wrote:
             | Maybe they were just worried about his wellbeing.
        
               | shellfishgene wrote:
               | There reason she gave was "Stay with us because they are
               | going to come to get our bodies" so I think they were
               | beyond worrying about anyone's wellbeing :( What a
               | nightmare.
        
               | MaKey wrote:
               | I read it as "They are going to come to get our bodies so
               | there is a chance we'll make it out of here alive if we
               | just wait".
        
               | shellfishgene wrote:
               | That makes more sense than my interpretation!
        
           | spuz wrote:
           | I would imagine they would be able to feel the movement and
           | sound of the waves which would tell them they were still
           | afloat.
        
         | dev-ns8 wrote:
         | Being an advanced scuba diver is absolutely no indication of
         | one's ability to freedive. You Absolutly can not compare the
         | two besides both taking place underwater.
         | 
         | On top of that, even if this guide was a Divemaster which is
         | far from guaranteed given the other safety failings from this
         | company, being an advanced Divemaster does not equate to one's
         | ability to cave dive. Survivors state the lack of lighting in
         | the boat and so I'm assuming he would have had to navigate the
         | boat in complete dark under water. So while not exactly cave
         | diving, it's equatable. An activity that's insanely dangerous
         | to anyone, even Divemasters that don't have cavern or cave
         | experience.
         | 
         | There's a reason there's a grim reaper sign at the entrance of
         | caves in popular dive locations.
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | The Egyptian dive guides are often pretty good freedivers,
           | especially when they started out as boat boys, they often
           | freedive every day to fasten ropes to the reef.
           | 
           | Still, deciding that the guide should not try does not even
           | make sense if there was only a 5% chance he'd make it, from
           | the two tourists point of view.
        
             | thoroughburro wrote:
             | I wouldn't sacrifice a life just to improve my own odds.
             | What cold logic you imagine of those people!
             | 
             | Edit: ah, name checks out.
        
       | Ekaros wrote:
       | Why didn't these divers free dive out? Should have been pretty
       | easy?
        
         | jajko wrote:
         | Clearly it wasn't, having diving certificate doesn't make you
         | magically an Aquaman.
        
           | relistan wrote:
           | Also, presumably they did not know if the boat was on the
           | bottom of the sea or not, and at what depth.
        
         | Filligree wrote:
         | Freediving inside an enclosed space is known as "angling for a
         | Darwin Award".
         | 
         | Doing it in a shipwreck is one of the most dangerous things you
         | can possibly do. You won't have the normal cues of up and down,
         | won't have any sort of decent lighting, and all the while your
         | body wants to panic due to CO2.
         | 
         | Then, they'd been breathing compressed air. If they reached the
         | surface they'd get the bends, and depending on depth that could
         | kill them or cause serious damage.
        
         | shellfishgene wrote:
         | Most SCUBA divers don't train freediving, next time at the pool
         | see how far you can dive on one breath. Then imagine being
         | panicked, in the dark, in a ship you don't know that well, in
         | the machine room you've never been in before, where now
         | everything is upside down and at an angle, filled with water
         | and all kinds of stuff floating around.
        
           | Filligree wrote:
           | Do I have to? It's going to give me nightmares.
           | 
           | Yeah, if he'd tried swimming out there'd have been one less
           | survivor.
        
         | saberience wrote:
         | So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not a
         | diver or free-diver. I've done a lot of diving and a little bit
         | of free-diving.
         | 
         | I would never, not a million years, try and free-dive out of a
         | boat, especially a large and unfamiliar boat that had sunk.
         | It's almost certain death to try and do so.
         | 
         | 1) No Breath: First of all, the average person can roughly hold
         | their breath a minute or lets be generous and say one and a
         | half minutes. Well, that's in perfect comfortable conditions in
         | a nice warm, safe, room. Now you're in cold water, you're in
         | shock because your boat sank, and you're in the dark, you're
         | likely highly anxious or panicking, you can now hold your
         | breath 30-45 seconds if doing no work at all. If you're
         | actively swimming for your life you probably last for 20-30
         | seconds IF THAT.
         | 
         | 2) Getting Lost: Dive boats can be quite large, full of random
         | objects, and if you've been diving on a boat for a few days
         | only, there is little chance you are going to be able to
         | navigate through the boat in the dark in good conditions, now
         | imagine the boat is filled with water, completely dark and
         | upside down. You are panicked and disoriented, if you somehow
         | manage to find an exit it's almost entirely down to dumb luck.
         | 
         | 3) Depth (and potential DCS). You have no idea what depth the
         | boat has sunk to. So let's say it's at 50m, it takes a long
         | time to surface from 50m and if it's already taken you 1 minute
         | to get out of the boat, you're fucked again. Not to mention any
         | DCS you may suffer if you've been breathing compressed air down
         | at 50m for very long!
         | 
         | Maybe there are some combination of factors which would make
         | this a good idea, like, very small boat with very obvious
         | exits, warm water in the tropics, shallow water and its daytime
         | so there is light to see by, and you're also a champion free-
         | diver and regularly do 7-9 minute breath holds. Sure in these
         | cases you might just swim out.
         | 
         | But if you're a normal person trying to swim out of a boat in
         | the dark, upside-down, in unknown depths, cold water, random
         | detritus floating everywhere, just stay put!
        
           | shellfishgene wrote:
           | _Depth (and potential DCS). You have no idea what depth the
           | boat has sunk to. So let 's say it's at 50m, it takes a long
           | time to surface from 50m and if it's already taken you 1
           | minute to get out of the boat, you're fucked again. Not to
           | mention any DCS you may suffer if you've been breathing
           | compressed air down at 50m for very long!_
           | 
           | If the boat is at 50 m the chances of getting rescued in time
           | are probably so low that it may even make sense to try as a
           | last ditch effort? If you remember to breath out on ascent.
           | Hard to say...
        
             | Filligree wrote:
             | Breathing out isn't the issue. Sure, you'll rupture your
             | airways if you don't, but you'll still get decompression
             | sickness if you do.
             | 
             | So even in the incredibly unlikely scenario that you reach
             | the surface, you'll have nitrogen bubbles in your
             | bloodstream that'll quickly kill you.
             | 
             | Look up a dive chart; fifty meters is much too far down,
             | especially if you've been there a while.
        
               | YZF wrote:
               | I don't think decompression sickness is the main concern
               | here. Dive boats would usually anchor somewhere
               | relatively shallow. You're probably making some decision
               | reasonably quickly so you haven't absorbed that much
               | nitrogen yet. If you're >50m deep you have other problems
               | (like depth narcosis).
               | 
               | Decompression sickness can kill you quickly if you get
               | large bubbles in your brain or heart but that's less
               | typical. Many cases of decompression sickness can be
               | treated in a compression chamber within some reasonable
               | amount of time after surfacing. Onset of decompression
               | sickness is also often delayed by as much as 48 hours.
        
           | keybored wrote:
           | This is like hearing about two people falling off a cliff
           | right after each other and dying. Then someone says: I wonder
           | why the first person didn't catch on to the ledge, grab the
           | other person with their other arm and pull them and
           | themselves back up.
           | 
           | It's the sort of thing that would only make sense in a movie.
        
           | YZF wrote:
           | Red sea isn't that cold though, likely something like 23
           | Celsius, this was winter so it's slightly colder. In the
           | summer I've dived the red sea with no wet suit and it's
           | certainly not a problem to swim for some time.
           | 
           | I've also done a lot of diving and I'm not sure if I'd try or
           | not. Dive boats are not that large and if it's a liveaboard
           | you'll get very familiar with the boat pretty quick. There's
           | typically a main cabin area/level, stairs to the cabins, and
           | that's about it. If it's that or death then I might take my
           | chances. Assuming you are in an air pocket then you have time
           | to regroup, plan, and also take a deep breath. Dark is
           | certainly a problem and not having a mask does make for a
           | complication. It also depends where I am specifically on the
           | boat. If you're talking about swimming out immediately when
           | you wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself
           | under water - yeah, that's a tough one. It's basically what
           | these guys did though, they got to this air pocket. From the
           | sound of it when they woke up the boat was not completely
           | flooded either.
           | 
           | Looking at the video I agree this doesn't look like a great
           | place to swim out of.
           | 
           | You can likely tell if you're on the surface or not. You're
           | going to feel the swell, waves etc.
           | 
           | One takeaway is to have an emergency plan ready in advance.
           | If you're super paranoid you can also have your mask with
           | you. Some divers carry an extra compressed air bottle which
           | would be handy too. Flashlight?
        
             | saberience wrote:
             | If I was in my cabin and the window was possible to swim
             | out of I would probably go for it. If I was in the back of
             | the boat and downstairs so I had to navigate corridors and
             | stairs in the dark and upside down I would probably try and
             | wait. Also, if I knew for sure I was in say 15m of water or
             | perhaps 20m, I would also try and go for it, especially in
             | tropical areas in the daytime. How light it is and shallow
             | it is would be a huge factor for me. Disorientation is real
             | so upside down boat in the dark is a huge nope.
             | 
             | Would depend. I never do cheap liveaboards though,
             | especially in the Red Sea, you get what you pay for. I've
             | heard soooo many stories of sketchy liveaboards or other
             | dive shops in the Red Sea area that I would always be very
             | careful before picking a boat.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Kinda wild that the Egyptian gov just put out a made up cause
       | with zero evidence instead of saying cause unknown currently
        
         | shellfishgene wrote:
         | See this unrelated story from a few weeks back...
         | https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/masks-smoke-and-mirrors-...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-01-18 23:02 UTC)