Divers speak of safety failings on Sea Story sister ship

Divers who took a recent liveaboard trip on a boat operated by Dive Pro Liveaboard, owner of Sea Story – which sank on Monday with the loss of at least four lives and with seven people still missing – have spoken of major safety failings on board their vessel.

Speaking to Sky News, an ‘experienced diver’ who gave his name only as Timothy, said that divers on board the Dive Pro Liveaboard Sea Pearl, sister ship to Sea Story, had concerns about ‘boat safety standards’.

Chief among these were the lack of a life jacket drill and ‘no centralised system or adequate communication’ about how to raise the alarm in the event of an emergency.

‘The Egyptian government has robust safety standards, but there’s very little enforcement,’ the diver told Sky News. ‘We weren’t told how to deploy the life rafts or anything like that.’

The diver said that passengers were not asked to familiarise themselves with their life jackets, and another couple in their group reportedly said that only one life jacket was present in their two-person cabin.

He added that when the couple went to ask for another one, a crewmember told them ‘It’s fine, we have plenty of them in the crew quarters.’

Divers who recently travelled on Dive Pro Liveaboard’s Sea Pearl spoke of poor safety standards

The diver said there was ‘no safety plan or drill’ – also known as a muster drill – when they boarded the boat and they took it upon themselves to locate Sea Pearl’s emergency hatch as nobody had shown them how to open it.

‘There was no plan of escape,’ he told Sky News. ‘We found [the hatch] ourselves. It’s only approximately a metre square – so it would be only one person at a time.

‘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.’

A second diver named by Sky News as ‘James’, who was on the same trip, said that ‘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.’

Sky News said it had approached Dive Pro Liveaboards for comment, but had so far not received a response.

Sea Story is the second liveaboard owned by Dive Pro Liveaboard to have been lost in 2024. A German woman is presumed dead after going missing when the MY Sea Legend caught fire during the early hours of 22 February, sinking shortly afterwards.

In an interview posted on German magazine Taucher’s YouTube channel, divers on board Sea Legend when it caught fire said that the situation was ‘very chaotic’; none of the crew or guides took responsibility for the evacuation; one of the zodiac’s engines was not working and the other was taking on water – and there were no life vests, no lights and no emergency flares.

Sea Story’s tragic loss brings the total number of Egyptian liveaboards lost this year to five, following the sinkings of following the sinkings of Nouran earlier in November, Seaduction in October and Exocet in June.

In 2023, three British divers were killed when the MV Hurricane – one of the Red Sea’s most popular liveaboards – caught fire near Elphinstone Reef. Just a few months earlier, the MV Carlton Queen capsized near Sha’ab Abu Nuhas.