This is the Blue Hole in the Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
It's one of many of these blue holes around the globe,
but this one is considered to be by far the most dangerous.
And as I'm sure you'll see,
this is only highlighted by some of the horrifying incidents that have taken place here.
As always, viewer discretion is advised.
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This is Tarek Omar.
Professionally, he's a technical diver and instructor.
Unofficially, he's nicknamed the "Bone Collector".
He's also been called the "Grave Keeper",
and the grave or cemetery that he keeps is the Blue Hole in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
The Blue Hole is one of the most popular dive sites on Earth for both novice and expert divers.
It's also thought to be the single deadliest dive site on the planet.
Over the years, it's estimated that at least 130 people have lost their lives diving the hole,
but some estimates put the figure at over 200.
On top of that, since no official records have been kept, no one is really sure exactly.
It could be significantly higher still.
Since the late '90s, Tarek has been involved in the majority,
if not all, of the body recoveries that have been performed.
And although this isn't all of the over a hundred divers who've lost their lives here,
it's still enough that he's lost count.
After two decades of making the recoveries, the only names that he remembers
are the first two that he ever recovered, shortly after coming to the nearby city.
They were Martin Gara and Conor O'Regan.
In 1997, Martin traveled from Ireland to Egypt to spend the year working as a dive instructor,
taking advantage of all the great spots this area has to offer.
Part of the way through the year, his friend, Conor, joined
so that the two of them could finish out the rest of the year together.
Conor was most of the way through the final phase of becoming an instructor as well,
so both men were quite experienced as well as considered to be
careful and meticulous divers by the people who knew them.
They also both loved diving so much that this trip was sort of like a test run
for some big plans they had upon returning to Ireland.
The two of them planned to scope out the area so they can then set up a travel agency
that would specialize in overseas dive tours.
In November of that year, about a month in advance of them heading home,
they both went to visit the famous Blue Hole dive spot to do some diving.
This trip was part of a larger trip made by PADI, which is a worldwide diving organization,
so a bunch of other trained and professional divers were on the trip as well.
At some point during the dive, Martin and Conor were separated from the rest of the group,
and so they were alone with no one else around them.
Somehow, when they got separated,
they accidentally went too deep for the gas mixture they were using.
This caused them both to lose consciousness,
which then caused their regulators to fall out of their mouths,
and then they sank to 65 meters or 213 feet.
All of the other divers only realized when everyone was on the surface,
and the two men were late for the scheduled return time.
Divers quickly went back down to search for the men,
but by the time they were found, it was already too late.
Their story is like so many others from the Blue Hole.
Otherwise careful and experienced divers go down into the hole, but then don't return.
So what is it exactly that makes the Blue Hole so deadly?
Maybe it would be a good idea first to define exactly what a blue hole is.
During past ice ages, sea levels were as low as a hundred meters
or 330 feet lower than what they are today.
During this time, way more of the world's land masses were out of the water,
which exposed many surface caves and sink holes.
Over time, the rain eroded these surface caves as they normally do with limestone.
And then as the sea levels rose, this was compounded
by the salty seawater flowing over the rocks.
Many of these surface caves then collapsed further into these large circular holes
that are now visible under the water's surface and are essentially vertical caves.
The cool but creepy part about them though is that the outer edge of these holes,
is composed of different types of rock that don't dissolve like the inner portion.
Inside of the edge of this stable rim, the holes can drop dramatically
to much, much deeper than the surrounding sea floor.
The Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize is a good example of this.
The edge of the hole is only 10 meters or 33 feet deep,
but then if you drop over the edge, it drops vertically to 124 meters
or 407 feet in basically a single vertical drop.
And because the depth of the edge and bottom are so different,
this creates the crazy contrasting color that's visible from the surface.
You'll have a typically blue tropical water around the edges,
but then a deep, dark blue in the middle, close to the color of the open ocean.
Another consequence of the contrast in depth is that the water circulation
in these sink holes is often very poor, especially the deeper you go.
In fact, many of the bottoms of these blue holes are completely without oxygen.
So in addition to being deep and dark, they can be completely devoid of sea life,
which makes for sort of a barren alien world compared to the surrounding waters.
In any case, these blue holes are found worldwide,
and offer pretty unique diving conditions.
They generally don't have a current because they're cut off from the rest of the water,
so that's just one more variable divers don't have to worry about.
Some of these are also very close to the shore too,
so you can literally be on the beach, walk into the water a few feet away,
and then down to hundreds of feet of depth.
This makes them pretty accessible and convenient on top of everything else.
It's for the reason that they're so popular for scuba diving and free diving even,
but that doesn't really answer why these dive sites are so deadly.
Or in particular, what makes the site near Dahab so deadly that it's called a diver cemetery?
Unfortunately, there isn't a super clear answer to this question.
In fact, it's not even clear if the site is actually more deadly than others.
Since no official records are kept about how many dives have been done
or the number of divers who died,
you can't really compare the rate of fatalities to the average for diving.
It could be more dangerous, and that's why the death toll is so high,
or it could simply be that the absolute number is higher
because of the sheer number of dives that take place in the hole.
Either way, weirdly, this reputation doesn't at all discourage people from coming;
it seems to be the opposite.
Part of the attraction even is that it has this sinister reputation -
it's beautiful but deadly.
On the shore, there's even a memorial for some of the divers
who've lost their lives in the hole.
Almost morbidly, prospective divers come to check out these plaques
shortly before entering the water,
hoping not to need to be recovered by Tarek like Martin and Conor.
The reality is that the people who have been recovered
are only a small fraction of the people who are actually down there.
Due to the size and depth of the hole, sometimes, people are not found until long after.
At which point, it's recommended not to recover them
because of the decomposition that's already occurred.
Morbidly as well, divers often take videos when they dive the Blue Hole.
Then, when they watched the video back later,
occasionally, equipment belonging to these lost individuals
is visible, nestled in the sand or the rocks along the bottom.
One possibility to explain the danger of the hole in Dahab is its unique shape.
From the water's surface, the walls narrow like a funnel as you travel deeper.
Then, at 52 meters or 170 feet, there is a large arch on the far side of the hole.
This arch opens up into another 26-meter
or 85-foot tunnel that continues to descend diagonally
until it passes through the wall of the hole, into the open ocean.
From there, there are rapid incremental drops in depth
that go from 120 meters or 390 feet at the tunnel's exit,
all the way to 800 meters or 2,600 feet.
There are several intermediate steps in between,
but that is the final drop off to the ocean floor.
For these deeper steps, only technical diving is possible
because regular air becomes toxic at these depths.
It's also possible that it's for this reason that the hole is so dangerous.
Maybe because of the rapid drop from the surface,
it's just so easy for divers on regular air to descend too quickly
without realizing how far they've gone.
Then, before they know it, the nitrogen narcosis becomes too intoxicating, and they pass out.
But it's not only divers on regular air who have died there, obviously.
Like for example, in 2011, a man named Igor planned to do a technical dive
down to 150 meters; roughly 50 meters above the hole's true depth.
He was very experienced and had done exactly 400 dives
when he entered the water at the Blue Hole that day.
First, he got into the arch at 50 meters.
Then at 90 meters, he passed another man who recalled thinking that Igor looked shaky,
but that he gave him the "okay" signal anyway.
Then down to 120 meters, then to 150 meters,
and Igor was at the deepest he'd ever been by far.
After a hard landing on a ledge at 150 meters, he began to ascend,
but by then, things were already beginning to go bad.
At 130 meters, Igor began to hyperventilate.
This turned to complete panic, and then in an instant,
Igor shot up to the surface without making any stops.
This is a terrifying thing to do without making decompression stops
for the depth that he dove.
All of the dissolved gases in his blood, due to the pressure at depth
were now expanding rapidly as he ascended.
By the time he hit the surface, they would've been causing him an immense amount of pain
and would've been blocking the blood vessels all over his body.
As his head broke the water, he cried out in pain,
and then a few minutes later, he was dead.
Igor would be one that Tarek didn't need to recover.
Maybe another reason that this hole is so dangerous,
is that although diving is sort of regulated, in this area, money goes a long way.
Most of the dive shops in the area are licensed, but some aren't.
And then in addition to that, there's also lots of competition,
which drives down the price per dive.
Because of this, some of the instructors and guides are willing
to forego some of the rules and regulations in exchange for a little extra money.
This can create some suboptimal conditions for inexperienced divers.
However, at the very least, at least the people who pay for these services
still go with someone who's trained and experienced.
A far worse thing to do would be to simply go alone.
The most famous incident at the Blue Hole
is one that I'm sure many of you are already aware of.
But I think a video about the Blue Hole wouldn't be complete
without covering this incident, so I've included it in this video.
In April of the year 2000, a man named Yuri arrived in Dahab,
with the intent of taking advantage of all the diving spots in the area.
Yuri, who was a scuba diving instructor, had brought all of his scuba equipment with him,
and arrived in Dahab after visiting a friend of his in the nearby city of Tel Aviv.
For several years, as it was for many divers,
it had been a dream of Yuri's to dive the Blue Hole.
Yuri's father had made him promise not to do anything stupid or dangerous,
and so with that in mind, although he was alone,
he attempted to find someone to go with him.
So within a few hours of him arriving the city,
he was walking the street along the many dive shops,
looking for someone to go with him or to take him along.
People watched as Yuri wandered back and forth, inquiring about different services,
until finally, he managed to find a local man who agreed to go with him.
Shortly after that, the two of them arrived at the dive site and entered the water.
During Yuri's dive, he captured this video.
The video begins, and Yuri can be seen near the water's surface.
There are other divers around him, coral reefs, fish,
and the water is bright, blue and clear.
He briefly looks down at the camera to fiddle with it
and seems to attach some sort of lens cover to it.
Maybe this was some sort of case to protect it
from the pressure he knew it would experience.
He fiddles with it some more, and then once he seems satisfied,
his focus shifts to two other divers in front of him,
and you can see the long string of bubbles floating up away from them,
coming from their regulators.
They seem to be kicking gently to stay where they are,
floating together, almost as if they're talking.
He approaches these divers close enough to where it seems
he almost might come into contact with them.
He then moves past those divers and looks off into the distance,
and all he can see is the dark water with nothing in sight below him.
From somewhere much deeper, more bubbles seemed to be floating up,
indicating that some other divers are deeper and out of sight.
Yuri then begins to move in the direction of those bubbles.
I'm now going to skip ahead in the video where Yuri stops moving around
and fiddling with the camera and begins his descent.
Yuri can now be seen refocusing and directing his gaze
toward another diver down below him.
Maybe this is the local he brought along with him.
The person in front of him has another long string of bubbles floating up and away from him,
and soon enough, Yuri seems to swim past him.
He then looks up toward the surface, and you can see the sun shining through.
Then, his gaze goes back down to what looks like the bottom.
In reality, this is more like the inner wall of the hole,
and Yuri is swimming along its contour.
The water here is already much darker than the surface above.
Now, I'm gonna do something that I don't normally do.
I'm just gonna let the video run without saying anything
so that you can listen to his breathing as he descends.
Occasionally, you'll see the inner wall in the bottom of the frame,
but pay attention to just how dark the water gets in just a few moments.
Now is maybe a good time to mention that Yuri is only using regular air.
As he was descending, he would've been increasingly affected by nitrogen narcosis,
and in addition to that, his buoyancy control would've become
less and less effective as the pressure increased.
The water is already so dark that it's unbelievable.
Right here, he looks at his dive computer to check his depth,
and it reads 81 meters or 265 feet.
Regular air isn't recommended below 40 meters.
Yuri is almost twice as deep as that.
For the next few moments, you're gonna see him struggle
along the bottom of whatever ledge he's come to rest on,
and it's unclear how aware he is of what's happening.
In a second, you're gonna hear the hiss of air
as he tries to inflate his buoyancy control device.
Unfortunately, Yuri is too deep, and the equipment he has is too heavy.
He struggles around for another few moments,
possibly desperately trying to swim up, but it's already too late.
The camera cuts off while Yuri is still trying to navigate the terrifying situation he is in.
About 40 minutes later, when Yuri didn't return from the water,
everyone knew what that meant.
His parents were contacted shortly after, and his father was in Dahab the following day.
After pleading with the locals to recover Yuri from the bottom,
Tarek finally volunteered to make the recovery.
At the time, this was the deepest recovery that anyone had ever done.
Yuri was eventually found, lying face down, with far too much weight attached to him,
at a final depth of 91 meters.
Tarek also found that in his effort to make himself more buoyant,
Yuri's buoyancy control device had actually burst due to being overfilled.
In the end, Yuri was brought back up,
and all of his personal belongings were returned to his parents.
This included the camera, which at the time, Tarek didn't know was still functional.
It was only rated for a depth of 75 meters, so he assumed it had broken,
and any footage wouldn't have been captured.
Unfortunately, as you saw, it had captured everything,
which was promptly played in front of his mother and father.
Tarek has stated that had he known it was functional,
he would've flooded the camera himself.
In fact, the final five seconds of the footage were captured the following day
accidentally as they were trying to see if the camera was working.
Yuri's footage is now used as a warning for new divers about the dangers of scuba diving.
The striking thing about the video is how quickly it all seems to happen.
From the point that the water is so clear and calm and everything is fine,
just a few moments pass before the water is pitch-black and alien.
Before you can even tell what's going on, it's already too late.
And maybe it's for this reason that the Blue Hole in Dahab is so deadly.
The conditions at the surface give the illusion of a much safer environment than what it is.
Thank you all so much for watching. If you wanna see the full video,
a quick search of "Yuri Lipski" on YouTube will get you the full footage.
I know this is an incident that has been covered a lot before,
but it's one that's so harrowing and has been recommended by so many of you;
I wanted to put something out that was covering it.
Hopefully, there were even some new insights if you'd seen it before in some other capacity.
If you wanna support the channel, give this video a like.
If you have a story suggestion, feel free to send it to me by the email found in the description.
And once again, thank you so much for watching, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.