Diver exploring Blue Hole suffered tragic death after ignoring trainer’s warnings
***Warning: Some viewers may find this video distressing.***
A diver who died a tragic death in a popular diving spot had ignored a diving trainer's warning to not proceed.
Russian-Israeli diver Yuri Lipski had been diving at the Blue Hole located in the Red Sea in Egypt on 28 April 2000.
Advert
Sadly, he would never surface again.
However, the camera he was wearing on his helmet was recovered, which had somehow remained intact.
And the harrowing footage on the camera showed Lipski's final moments before his untimely death.
It's believed that Lipski’s death occurred after reaching a depth of 91 meters.
And, at this depth, the intense pressure could have caused Lipski to experience a condition known as nitrogen narcosis, specialists believe.
Nitrogen narcosis can cause feelings of euphoria, confusion, hallucinations, and a loss of judgement.
These symptoms are pretty bad at the surface, but underwater, they can be deadly.
When he arrived in Egypt, Lipski met with technical diver, Tarek Omar, known as 'The Elder Diver', who'd warned him against taking the dive.
Lipski had told Omar that he wanted to record a video of the Blue Hole arch.
"I said ‘OK, so you’ll need two weeks’ training with me first, and then we’ll film’.” Omar told The Guardian in 2017.
However, because he only had a weekend in town, Lipski turned down his offer and went on the dive alone.
His body was later recovered by Omar the following morning.
And tragically, Lipski's is not the only body that the diver has had to recover from the site.
It's been estimated that as many as 200 people have died at The Blue Hole.
“Recovering bodies is a case by case thing; I do it pro bono." he told Scene Arabia.
“It is a very critical and difficult thing to do – it requires more than just being a technical diver, it takes more than experience. It is very hard because you dive deep and you stay down to locate the remains."
The Blue Hole is a hugely popular place for scuba divers. It is a submarine sinkhole which shelves off extremely quickly and is very near to the shore.
It drops down to a depth of around 100 metres at its deepest, and has two connections to the ocean.
And the deadly spot was recently the subject of new Netflix documentary, The Deepest Breath.
The documentary tells the story of two free divers, Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan, as they team up to break world records in the sport.
Tragically, Keenan lost his life while saving Zecchini.
Topics: News, World News, Sport
Kit Roberts