Blue Hole Dahab Details

Carved into a reef, 8km north of Dahab is Egypt’s most infamous dive site. The Blue Hole is a gaping sinkhole that drops straight down – some say as deep as 130m. Exploring the deeper depths should be left to experienced technical divers, but there's plenty to discover close to the surface. The outer lip is full of marine life and a reasonable plunge into the hole is somewhat akin to skydiving. Depth: 7m to 27m. Rating: intermediate to advanced. Access: shore.

Advanced divers can enter at the Bells, a narrow breach in the reef table that forms a pool close to shore. From here, divers descend through a chimney, exiting at 27m on a ledge that opens to the sea. Swim south along the wall, a saddle in the reef at 7m allows entry to the Blue Hole. As long as divers monitor their depth carefully, they can finish up by swimming across the sinkhole towards shore.

Unfortunately, the site has claimed several lives, mainly thrill-seekers venturing well below the sport-diving limit. The trap is an archway at approximately 65m, which connects the sinkhole to the open ocean. Under-prepared solo divers attempting to find this archway have succumbed to narcosis, missed the archway entirely, lost all sense of direction or simply run out of air. In 2017 these dangers were highlighted yet again when renowned Irish freediving safety diver Stephen Keenan tragically died when rescuing another freediver who had become disorientated.

Diving History

The Blue Hole was historically avoided by Bedouin tribes people who inhabited the area. There was a local Bedouin legend that the Blue Hole is cursed by the ghost of a girl who drowned herself there to escape from an arranged marriage.^[5]

The Sinai Peninsula was occupied by Israel from the Six-Day War of 1967 until Israel returned it to Egypt in 1982. During the Israeli occupation, the Blue Hole developed a significant international reputation as a dive site. In 1968 a group of Israeli divers led by Alex Shell were the first to dive the hole with modern scuba diving. During the dive, they noticed the underwater arch.^{[citation needed]} .

Since 1982 the Blue Hole has become very busy with recreational divers and is dived almost every day by recreational divers. Local dive centres take appropriately qualified divers (AOW level or CMAS) to 30 m (AOW level or CMAS**) at the El Bells or Bells to Blue Hole sites. The Bells entry is from the shore further along from the Blue Hole.^[6] At 26 m at the bottom of the Bells is a mini arch that should not be confused with the arch in the Blue Hole itself. The dive is then a wall dive that finishes crossing the Blue Hole saddle at a depth of 7 m. Recreational divers do not get to see the Blue Hole arch when doing the Bells to Blue Hole dive.

Fatalities

The Blue Hole itself is no more dangerous than any other Red Sea dive site but diving through the Arch, a submerged tunnel, which lies within the Blue Hole site, is an extreme dive that has resulted in many accidents and fatalities. The number of Blue Hole fatalities is not recorded; one source estimates 130 divers died during the fifteen-year period from 1997 to 2012, averaging over eight per year, another claim as many as 200. 

This includes some snorkeling deaths at the surface unrelated to diving the Arch. The majority of diver fatalities were experienced, including highly trained technical divers and diving instructors. The Egyptian Chamber For Diving & Watersports (CDWS) now stations a policeman at the Blue Hole to ensure divers are diving with a certified guide who will make sure safety procedures are followed.

The ceiling of the Arch is 55 m (170 ft), which requires suitable training and equipment as 40 metres is generally considered the limit for recreational diving. The Arch presents little problem for suitably qualified technical divers. The main challenge is gas management because any lingering or errors at this depth, plus the time to negotiate the horizontal section, will need more than a single tank of breathing gas to do safely. If gas is not carefully planned the diver may lack sufficient air for the decompression stops or run out of air altogether.

The main reasons suggested for the accident rate include that the:

• Notoriety of the site attracts divers and presents a challenge that tempts many who lack the necessary experience or qualifications.
• Accessibility of the site and the clear, warm waters of the Red Sea makes the dive look more benign that it is. At over 55 m, and with an overhead environment, the dive requires advanced technical certification, the Tech 60 as a minimum.
• Deceptive entry to the Arch is not easy to find because of the indirect line between the Blue Hole and open water. Divers who miss the entry may inadvertently continue to descend past it, while the floor continues on down to well over 100 m providing no visual depth reference.^[5]
• Time taken to pass through the Arch may be underestimated. The tunnel appears shorter than it actually is because of the clarity of the water, the light at the outside end and the lack of reference points; divers report that the tunnel appears to be less than 10 m long but has been measured as 26 m. Moreover, there is frequently a current flowing inward through the arch into the Blue Hole, increasing the time it takes to swim through and increasing gas consumption.
• Depth and the time taken to find and navigate the tunnel inevitably makes this dive a decompression dive requiring possibly lengthy decompression stops on ascent in order to avoid decompression sickness (DCS). Also, the rate of diving gas consumption increases with depth resulting in divers either becoming out of gas or beginning the ascent with insufficient gas to make the decompression stops required.
• Likelihood of nitrogen narcosis is significant at this depth, causing confusion leading to poor judgment in an already demanding situation. Although the effects of nitrogen narcosis may be mitigated by using heliox the Arch is insufficiently deep to warrant its use.
• Temptation to dive on a single gas tank. Theoretically, the Arch can be dived on a single 11 Litre tank, and often has been, but this is dangerously close to the minimum gas requirement for the dive and depends on a relaxed diver with a low gas consumption rate committing no errors or hesitations during the dive. Diving the Arch without a stage tank and without rigorous gas planning has resulted in drowning or DCS.