The Blue Hole is a diving location on the southeast
Sinai, a few kilometres north of
Dahab
Dahab ( arz, دهب, , "gold") is a small Egyptian town on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, approximately northeast of Sharm el-Sheikh. Formerly a Bedouin fishing village, Dahab is now considered to be one of Egypt's most tre ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
on the coast of the
Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; ...
.
The Blue Hole is a
submarine sinkhole, with a maximum depth within the hole of just over 100 m (328 feet). There is a shallow opening to the sea around 6 m (20 feet) deep, known as "the saddle", and a 26 m (85 feet) long tunnel, known as "the Arch", whose ceiling is at a depth of 55 m (181 feet) and whose bottom falls away as it reaches the seaward side to about 120 m (394 feet). On the seaward side the floor drops steeply to over .
The hole and the surrounding area have an abundance of
coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...
and
reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock o ...
fish.
The Blue Hole is popular for freediving because of the depth directly accessible from shore and the lack of current.
The dive site is reputed to have the most diver fatalities in the world with estimates of between 130 and 200 fatalities in recent years.
[Top diver’s death casts long shadow over deep beauty of the Blue Hole](_blank)
Edmund Bower, Sunday 27 August 2017, The Guardian['' Monty Halls and the Divers' Graveyard'', ]Channel 5 (UK)
Channel 5 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel launched in 1997. It is the fifth national terrestrial channel in the United Kingdom and is owned by Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of American ...
television, 9pm to 10pm, Monday 2 December 2013 The reasons for why this site has such a high number of fatalities are not clearly understood.
Diving history
The Blue Hole was historically avoided by
Bedouin tribes people who inhabited the area.
The
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai (now usually ) (, , cop, Ⲥⲓⲛⲁ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is ...
was
occupied by Israel from the
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) from 5 to 10 Ju ...
of 1967 until it was returned in the
Egypt–Israel peace treaty
The Egypt–Israel peace treaty ( ar, معاهدة السلام المصرية الإسرائيلية, Mu`āhadat as-Salām al-Misrīyah al-'Isrā'īlīyah; he, הסכם השלום בין ישראל למצרים, ''Heskem HaShalom Bein Yisrael ...
in 1979. During the Israeli occupation, the Blue Hole developed a significant international reputation as a dive site. In 1968 a group of Israeli divers led by Alex Shell were the first to dive the hole with
modern scuba diving. During the dive, they noticed the underwater arch.
Since 1982 the Blue Hole has become very busy and is dived almost every day by recreational divers. Local dive centres take appropriately qualified divers to 30 m (AOW level or CMAS**) at the El Bells or Bells to Blue Hole sites. The Bells entry is from the shore further along from the Blue Hole.
At 26 m at the bottom of the Bells is a mini arch that should not be confused with the arch in the Blue Hole itself. The dive is then a wall dive that finishes crossing the Blue Hole saddle at a depth of 7 m. Recreational divers do not get to see the Blue Hole arch when doing the Bells to Blue Hole dive.
Fatalities
![Blue hole memorial](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Blue_hole_memorial.jpg)
The Blue Hole itself is no more dangerous than any other Red Sea dive site but diving through the Arch, a submerged tunnel, which lies within the Blue Hole site, is an extreme dive that has resulted in many accidents and fatalities.
The number of Blue Hole fatalities is not accurately recorded; one source estimates 130 divers died during the fifteen-year period from 1997 to 2012, averaging over eight per year, another claims as many as 200.
This includes some snorkelling deaths at the surface unrelated to diving the Arch.
FATAL ATTRACTION
Theodora Sutcliffe The Egyptian Chamber For Diving & Watersports (CDWS) now stations a policeman at the Blue Hole to ensure divers are diving with a certified guide who will make sure safety procedures are followed.
The ceiling of the Arch is 55 m (170 ft) deep, which requires suitable training and equipment as 40 metres is generally considered the limit for recreational diving. The Arch presents little problem for suitably equipped and competent technical divers. The main challenge is gas management because any delays or errors at this depth, plus the time to negotiate the horizontal section, will need more than a single tank of breathing gas
A breathing gas is a mixture of gaseous chemical elements and compounds used for respiration. Air is the most common and only natural breathing gas, but other mixtures of gases, or pure oxygen, are also used in breathing equipment and enclosed ...
to do safely. If gas is not carefully planned the diver may lack sufficient gas for the decompression stops or run out of gas altogether.
The main reasons suggested for the accident rate include that the:
* Notoriety of the site attracts divers and presents a challenge that tempts many who lack the necessary competence.
* Accessibility of the site and the clear, warm waters of the Red Sea makes the dive look more benign than it is. At over 55 m, and with an overhead environment, the dive requires competence usually associated with moderately advanced technical certification, with a technical extended range (55 meters on air) or Tech 60 (normoxic trimix) as a minimum qualification.
* The entry to the Arch is not easy to find because of the indirect line between the Blue Hole and open water. Divers who miss the entry may inadvertently continue to descend past it, while the floor continues on down to well over 100 m providing no visual depth reference.[
* Time taken to pass through the Arch may be underestimated. The tunnel appears shorter than it actually is because of the clarity of the water, the light at the outside end and the lack of reference points; divers report that the tunnel appears to be less than 10 m long but has been measured as 26 m. Moreover, there is frequently a current flowing inward through the arch into the Blue Hole, increasing the time it takes to swim through and increasing gas consumption.
* Depth and the time taken to find and navigate the tunnel inevitably makes this a decompression dive requiring ]decompression stops
The decompression of a diver is the reduction in ambient pressure experienced during ascent from depth. It is also the process of elimination of dissolved inert gases from the diver's body, which occurs during the ascent, largely during ...
on ascent in order to avoid decompression sickness
Decompression sickness (abbreviated DCS; also called divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, and caisson disease) is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompressio ...
(DCS). Also, the rate of diving gas consumption increases with depth and effort, which can lead to divers running out of gas or beginning the ascent with insufficient gas to make the decompression stops required.
* The likelihood of nitrogen narcosis
Narcosis while diving (also known as nitrogen narcosis, inert gas narcosis, raptures of the deep, Martini effect) is a reversible alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth. It is caused by the anesthetic effect of certain g ...
causing confusion leading to poor judgement in an already demanding situation is significant at this depth. Although the effects of nitrogen narcosis may be mitigated by using trimix or heliox
Heliox is a breathing gas mixture of helium (He) and oxygen (O2). It is used as a medical treatment for patients with difficulty breathing because mixture generates less resistance than atmospheric air when passing through the airways of the lung ...
the Arch is insufficiently deep to make its use obligatory.
* Temptation to dive on a single gas tank. The Arch has been dived on single, 11-litre tanks multiple times, but this is dangerously close to the minimum gas requirement for the dive and depends on a fit and relaxed diver with a low gas consumption rate committing no errors or hesitations during the dive. Diving the Arch without a stage tank and without adequate gas planning has resulted in drowning or DCS.
Death of Yuri Lipski
A notable death was that of Yuri Lipski, a 22-year-old Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
diving instructor on 28 April 2000 at a depth of 115 metres after an uncontrolled descent. Lipski carried a video camera, which filmed his death. This has made it the best known death at the site and one of the best known diving deaths in the world. The video shows Lipski in an involuntary and uncontrolled descent, eventually landing on the sea floor at 115 metres where he panics, removes his regulator and tries to fill his buoyancy compensator but is unable to rise. At 115 m he would have been subject to severe nitrogen narcosis
Narcosis while diving (also known as nitrogen narcosis, inert gas narcosis, raptures of the deep, Martini effect) is a reversible alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth. It is caused by the anesthetic effect of certain g ...
, which may have impaired his judgement, induced hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinati ...
s and caused panic
Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reactio ...
and confusion
In medicine, confusion is the quality or state of being bewildered or unclear. The term "acute mental confusion" . Lipski had a single tank assumed to be air
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing f ...
.
Lipski's body was recovered the following day by Tarek Omar, one of the world's foremost deep-water divers, at the request of Lipski's mother. Omar had earlier twice warned Lipski against attempting the dive. On the bottom, Omar found Lipski's helmet camera, still intact. The video it contained is available on YouTube, entitled "Fatal Diving Accident Caught On Tape". Omar says:
Documentaries about diver deaths at the Blue Hole
Two television documentaries have been produced about diver deaths at the Blue Hole, investigating the video of the death of Yuri Lipski:
*''Sacred Truth, The Blue Hole of Dahab'' (2004), by Elena Konstantinou and Svetlana Klenova, NTV (Russia)
NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ) is a Russian free-to-air television channel that was launched as a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company . Since 14 April 2001 Gazprom Media controls the network. NTV has no official meaning according to Igor Malash ...
*''Monty Halls and the Divers' Graveyard'' (2013), by Monty Halls, Channel 5 (UK)
Channel 5 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel launched in 1997. It is the fifth national terrestrial channel in the United Kingdom and is owned by Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of American ...
References
{{Recreational dive sites, cavsit
Landforms of Egypt
Sinkholes of Asia
Underwater diving sites in Egypt