The scuba diving liveaboard MY Seaduction is reported to have sunk near Elba Reef in St John’s National Park in the southern part of the Egyptian Red Sea.
Seaduction was carrying 18 French divers from a club based in Mayenne, France, when she reportedly struck a reef during the night of Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 October.
All 18 divers and the 10-man crew were able to abandon the vessel and climb into lifeboats before it sank at around 4am on Thursday morning.
Posts on social media suggest that the area had been affected by heavy storms that week, with most boats refusing to venture further south than Sataya Reef.
‘At around 2:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, we felt the boat tilting heavily, and at 4 o’clock in the morning we heard a huge bang and then there was a terrible crash,’ one of the divers reported to Taucher.net.
‘The boat began to tilt more and more. Fortunately, the crew and the colleagues from the club reacted well and went from cabin to cabin warning the others to leave the rooms and berths, otherwise there would have been a tragedy.’
‘Four lifeboats were lowered into the water for us and the ten crew members. We had to scoop, scoop, scoop, because with every wave we really got some, and if we hadn’t scooped water, our [lifeboat] would have quickly filled up.’
The divers drifted for eight hours before being rescued by a fishing vessel and subsequently transferred to an Egyptian Navy ship to be taken to Marsa Alam.
All the divers are said to be ‘shocked and bruised’ but otherwise safe, although most of them have lost their belongings and passports having jumped from the ship ‘more or less in their pyjamas and shorts’.
The French Embassy in Cairo is said to be assisting the group with their journey back to France.
The MY Seaduction is the third liveaboard to have sunk in the Egyptian Red Sea this year. Exocet – also a popular liveaboard with French divers sank in June after hitting Sataya Reef and a German woman diver was lost, presumed dead, following a fire onboard MY Sea Legend in February.
