Coral Princess sinking and boat safety in Egypt

We recently arrived back from Egypt to read reports about an Egyptian dive boat sinking in the Red Sea near Sharm el-Sheikh.

This unfortunate disaster happened the same week that we were in the Sharm el-Sheikh – however the news of the disaster was not widely known within our dive group. A European dive instructor from Camel Dive Centre did mention the incident to another group that we were travelling with, but the conditions seemed so calm that they nearly couldn’t believe that this disaster could happen.

Since this disaster happened so close to us, I feel I should document some of facts that we observed.

Our first Dive of the trip was at Ras Katty on Monday 16 Nov 2009 aboard President II. The Coral Princess moored beside us during our dive at about 1130. While we were diving we saw an enormous chunk of coral (about 3 metres by 4 metres) that had become snagged on a rope and hanging about 7-8 metres off the bow of the vessel.

Our dive guide, Rudd,  was furious about this, and when we surfaced tried to raise the issue with the crew on board Coral Princess. The crew didn’t seem to care and it wasn’t possible to identify the captain on board either. In my opinion, this suggests that the crew on the Coral Princess were incompetent and negligent of their safety and conservation responsibilities. You don’t just snag your mooring ropes on a reef.

Secondly, we were out at Ras Mohamed on Thursday, the day that the Coral Princess sunk. Initial reports blamed bad weather for the accident.

An Egyptian official was cited as saying that poor weather and high waves had caused the boat to sink.

However we spent the whole day at Ras Mohamed and the weather was fine. There was hardly any wind and very little swell. The current at Ras Mohamed was the strongest I’ve dived in but was still safe. This statement makes me suspicious that Egyptian officials are trying to cover up human error or negligence as a cause of the accident.

The third and final point I want to make is a general one about the boat safety procedures we experienced. Although our dive briefings were very thorough and covered all the necessary safety procedures, there was little mention of boat safety. Most boats that I’ve been on (in other parts of the world) have buoyancy aids and life jackets in highly visible and accessible locations on the boat. However there was none of this on any of the boats that we saw – including those run by Camel. I even mentioned this to my dive buddy on one of the trips but just figured that in the event of an emergency the crew would be able to hand them out – or I could just put on my BCD and float. Plus there are usually many other dive vessels nearby these dive sites. However perhaps this provides a false sense of security.

According to survivor reports, the sad reality for Coral Princess was that the captain was the first to abandon ship. There was also no opportunity to issue a distress signal. This should be a wake up call to all operators in the Red Sea. I hope that proper emergency safety procedures are now taking place.

This has been a sobering experience and I’ll certainly take boat safety a lot more seriously. I feel terribly sorry for the families of the two Spanish tourists who lost their lives. Lastly, I hope that by documenting this Egyptian boat safety will improve and future disasters like this can be prevented.