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The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

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Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#81

Post by diveanon »

This site is notorious in the professional diving community.

There is nothing particularly dangerous about it except the huge numbers of greedy dive centers who take inexperienced divers there.

To all novice divers reading this, dive within your limits and you have nothing to worry about. Do not listen to dive guides/instructors who encourage you to dive deeper than you are certified or in wrecks / caves without the proper training.

Diving is a calculated risk like most extreme "sports", and when you ignore those risks you endanger yourself and anyone else diving with you.

Don't expect your guide to care more about your life than you do.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#82

Post by qzw »

permo-w wrote: post #63
retSava wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the basic (open water?) license in Australia, and the group were sent into a pool to tread water for 20 minutes or something. Now, I can barely swim. Really poor buoyancy and bad technique I guess, so have never really learned. If the instructor had looked away from the TV for a second he would've seen and flunked me, which would probably have been a good thing. I'm stupid. Went through with it and out on a co…

top tip: most humans can float as long as their lungs are full

Only if they're not panicking and thrashing about.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#83

Post by ghaff »

matsemann wrote: post #69
ghaff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two biggest things with alpine hiking are probably weather and not turning around when you should. (I could probably add just being grossly ill-prepared like lacking map and compass and perhaps depending too much on electronic gizmos.) Over the holidays I was reading a book about a winter fatality on Mount Washington a few years back. The person was actually very well-prepared and fit. And even had some big mount…

> And even had some big mountain experience One problem is that that experience lull you into a false sense of security. I'm not talking arrogance or so. Merely that you can do something everyday that's unsafe and get away with it, training you on bad data to think it's safe. Like avalanches. Certain conditions are met. You go out. Everything is fine. Same the other times. You learn that it's safe. Suddenly an avalan…

Avalanches are probably one of those things that you can reduce the danger of in various ways but probably can't avoid entirely other than avoiding mountains that can potentially have an avalanche entirely.

For all the mitigation work they do on a regular basis, there are periodic avalanches at ski areas in the Alps and in the US West. Many of these are out of bounds, but not all. [1]

[1] https://www.powder.com/stories/skier-killed-in-avalanche-at-...

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#84

Post by diveanon »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #60

We have something like that, off the coast of Long Island. It’s the wreck of the San Diego ; a WWI battleship that sank at the close of the war. It’s upside-down, with a hole in the hull, and rests in about 40 meters of water (120 feet or so). What makes it dangerous, is that it’s filled with silt, and it only takes an errant kick of the flipper to fill a room with zero-visibility mud. People panic, and panic at 120…

Entering a wreck at 40m without a guide line is asking to die.

I have over 10k dives and the closest I came to death was when I was guiding on the liberty wreck in bali when a small earthquake shook the wreck, I was barely 3 meter into the wreck that I had dived hundreds of times and couldn't find my way out. Fortunately my buddy was outside the wreck at the time and used his banger to guide me out.

Point is, shit happens, so you better plan for it.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#85

Post by kubanczyk »

dcolkitt wrote: post #71
agent008t wrote: post #16

Diving seems like one of the recreational activities where it is easy to end up doing something much riskier than you intended (another I'd say is alpine hiking): 1. Being able to easily sign up for a dive at an all-inclusive resort makes it seem more 'fine', you get a false sense of security that you will be taken care of. 2. Dive shops tend to be fairly relaxed with checking if someone is properly qualified to go o…

At least at my local NAUI dive shop, PADI is generally considered to play too fast and loose with the rules. Especially with new and untrained divers. The joke is PADI stands for “Put Another Dollar In” Not that I’ll never go with a PADI dive, especially if it’s the only game in town where I’m visiting. But I generally bias towards NAUI, and would highly suggest anyone new go with a NAUI cert.

In Europe it's a very similar story, CMAS vs PADI.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#86

Post by 101008 »

agent008t wrote: post #67
101008 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got anxiety reading your story. Then diving it's a no for me for the rest of my life :D

Sorry if it put you off! For balance, diving can also be a very magical and surprisingly calm/zen-like experience. The best diving experiences I have had were in fairly shallow warm water (10-12m?) with great visibility. It is amazing seeing see-turtles, schools of fish, corals. It is like visiting a completely different world! Basically, as long as you dive in much better conditions than what you trained/qualified f…

I totally believe you, that diving in shallow water must be amazing and not that dangerous, but now I am scared that some teacher may start there and then "obligate" you to go deeper! "Just a few more meters, everything will be fine" :)

Thanks anyway for worrying about me, ha!

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#87

Post by meowfly »

kubanczyk wrote: post #80
meowfly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both caves and shipwrecks are allowed with Open Water as long as you are within a certain distance from an opening and natural light.

Absolutely not: > You need to be PADI Advanced Open Water Diver who is at least 18 years old to enroll in the Cavern Diver course. https://www.padi.com/courses/cavern-diver

Edit: I was wrong with the above statement.

After doing some research around this. Cenotes are an exception to the rule and even though Open Water Divers often do enter inner rooms in wreck dives and caverns what matters is maintaining a direct line of ascent.

---- Original ----

Open Water can do caverns. Dos Ojos is incredibly popular and has hard ceiling.

Edit: Also Cavern Diver is just a specialty cert and doesn't confer any extra penetration. Those certs are mostly designed for skill mastery. IANTD's Cavern cert is required to get Full Cave, but I don't know if PADI's would count towards it.

https://blog.padi.com/2019/04/29/must-dive-cenotes-for-open-...

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#88

Post by nradov »

diveanon wrote: post #77
edwardsdl wrote: post #6

Narcosis is nothing to trifle with. After a particularly bad experience at 150ft on air, I understand why some agencies advocate for a maximum equivalent narcotic depth* of 100ft. *For the non-divers out there, it’s possible substitute a less narcotic gas - typically helium but not always - for a portion of the narcotic gas in a mixture. Equivalent narcotic depth (END) is a way to equate a mixture’s narcotic effect t…

Once you start getting to technical depths you operate under the assumption that you are alone, even when diving with a buddy. I know some french federation divers who will tape their hands to their hand power inflator to avoid confusion when experience narcosis at depth. At first I thought it was a goofy idea, but after experiencing debilitating narcosis at 60m I had second thoughts about it.

No you really don't. I do a lot of technical diving and depend on my buddies for safety. The key is to select reliable buddies who have been properly trained.

And taping your hand to your power inflator is just too stupid for words. Put some helium in the mix.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#89

Post by diveanon »

agent008t wrote: post #16

Diving seems like one of the recreational activities where it is easy to end up doing something much riskier than you intended (another I'd say is alpine hiking): 1. Being able to easily sign up for a dive at an all-inclusive resort makes it seem more 'fine', you get a false sense of security that you will be taken care of. 2. Dive shops tend to be fairly relaxed with checking if someone is properly qualified to go o…

For any beginning divers reading this, dive your limits.

I am an instructor and it always makes me sad to hear about people questioning the hobby because of shady dive centers.

Do not let a guide or instructor talk you into exceeding your certification limits.

Also, if anyone encounters a situation like what is described above please report it to PADI asap. PADI takes cases like this very seriously and will initiate an investigation immediately.

You might save someones life.

Re: The Blue Hole in the Red Sea is the deadliest dive site in the world

#90

Post by matsemann »

ghaff wrote: post #83
matsemann wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even had some big mountain experience One problem is that that experience lull you into a false sense of security. I'm not talking arrogance or so. Merely that you can do something everyday that's unsafe and get away with it, training you on bad data to think it's safe. Like avalanches. Certain conditions are met. You go out. Everything is fine. Same the other times. You learn that it's safe. Suddenly an avalan…

Avalanches are probably one of those things that you can reduce the danger of in various ways but probably can't avoid entirely other than avoiding mountains that can potentially have an avalanche entirely. For all the mitigation work they do on a regular basis, there are periodic avalanches at ski areas in the Alps and in the US West. Many of these are out of bounds, but not all. [1] [1] https://www.powder.com/stori…

Yeah. Like when in a group having to traverse something almost horizontally on skis, we go with a long distance between each other. So that the risk of triggering something is smaller, and if something is triggered as few as possible is involved and others can do the rescue. I also have beacon, back pack with airbag etc. So minimized the risk as much as I can.

But sometimes I think. If I have to do aaall those things to mitigate the risk, is it really safe and worth it? So far, the answer is yes. Maybe it changes if I ever see an accident.

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