Qualified divers have told Sky News how “corner-cutting” caused significant safety hazards on a tourist boat with the same owners as the vessel which sank in the Red Sea.
The 44-metre-long Sea Story went down on Monday, south of the Egyptian coastal town of Marsa Alam.
Sea Story, which is owned by Dive Pro Liveaboard in Hurghada, Egypt, was a four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht which was on a multi-day diving trip.
An experienced diver has said he had travelled on another vessel, the Sea Pearl, owned by the same firm, just days before the incident.
Timothy, who only wanted to give his first name, said there were concerns among divers about “boat safety standards” on the Sea Pearl boat and the lack of a life jacket drill – and revealed there was no centralised system or adequate communication to raise the alarm in the event of an emergency.
“The Egyptian government has robust safety standards, but there’s very little enforcement,” he told Sky News.
“We weren’t told how to deploy the life rafts or anything like that. That’s not specific to Dive Pro – this would be common across the industry here.
“They didn’t say, ‘familiarise yourself with your life jackets in your room’.”
Timothy said another couple in the group revealed how they only had one life jacket between them in their cabin.
“When [they] went to the crew and asked for another one, they said ‘it’s fine, we have plenty of them in the crew quarters’,” he said.
“That’s an example of the kind of corner-cutting that I was referring to.
“I found that the staff were smoking cigarettes on the dive deck where we have compressed oxygen cylinders – you know, risk of a massive explosion.”
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He added there was no safety plan or drill put in place so people were aware of what to do in an emergency.
“Absolutely not. There was no plan of escape,” he said.
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Timothy said there was an emergency escape hatch on the Sea Pearl “but it wasn’t pointed out to us how to open it”.
He added: “We found it ourselves. It’s only approximately a metre square – so it would be only one person at a time.
“And imagine if the boat was inverted in the dark. Some of the divers were relatively elderly.
“There was no emergency drill at all. They just said there are life jackets in all the cabins, but it turns out that wasn’t the case.”
Another qualified diver, who only wants to be known as James, told Sky News he had been “unhappy” about his experience on Sea Pearl.
He added: “Safety didn’t feel paramount. It didn’t feel like it was the most important thing to Dive Pro, operating the Sea Pearl.
“We arrived at the boats and on the Saturday, nobody kind of said, ‘hi, I’m such and such’. They basically just guided us towards a man with a credit card machine.
“They wanted their port fees paying before we did anything else and any other extras that we needed.”
Dive Pro Liveaboard has been contacted by Sky News for comment, but the firm has not responded.