4 Divers Lost In Red Sea! Pls Help!

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Anyone with any information, please, contact help@webdive.ru

The missing divers are: Dutch Michel van Assendelft, PADI Advanced Open Water Diver; Russian Dmitry Kapitonov, PADI Open Water Diver; Russian Elena Sundukova, PADI Instructor; and Egyptian Mahmoud Ahmed Hamdan, dive guide.
(Photos of missing divers: http://www.webdive.ru/help.php)

Four tourists and a dive guide had entered the water at Elphinstone reef at about 9 a.m. on the 6th of January, 2007 in rough conditions. They surfaced about half an hour later to find that they had separated from their boat. The only boat in sight was distant yacht which did not spot them.

The current changed and took the divers northward away from the reef. The coast was in sight and they decided to swim towards it. They were holding hands to stay together and to keep alert. They were swimming towards shore till 6 p.m. After that four of them were flat-out and could not fight the waves. So, one of the group decided to swim separately (leaving his BCD with the rest) against the current doing his best to reach the shore and to alert a rescue-team. He did it by 9-10 p.m.

Nobody knows if there was an attempt to rescue four divers that night. There's a broad discussion (in Russian blogs and forums) about what the owner of diving center was doing in daytime when the boat had returned without divers (the boy said he waited for about an hour and a half) and the divers had been reported missing. It seems there was no rescue-boat or anything at all at that critical period of time. As the survived diver says, they saw only two passing by yachts while they were swimming to the shoreline, and that's all.

Search for the divers continued for 4 days afterwards. And 5 days more (from January, 11 till January, 15) the friends of russian divers were searching by themselves, getting help from everywhere. Divers disappeared without any trace.

We need ANY information on this accident. Any facts: people's names, boats' names, weather conditions, number of helicopters/planes you saw in the sky over the sea at that period, rescue teams you probably noticed on the beach or near dive sites. Feel free to contact us!

Email: help@webdive.ru

Other forums:

http://www.taucher.net/unfall/Vier_Taucher_im_Roten_Meer_ver schollen__itu469.html#28 - (german)

http://www.arabdiver.com/vb/showthread.php?t=359

WE WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS ALL PEOPLE WHO LIVE OR STAY IN EGYPT, SUDAN, SAUDI ARABIA, ANY OTHER NEARBY COUNTRIES WHERE OUR DIVERS COULD BE BROUGHT BY SEA AND/OR DIVED IN RED SEA IN JANUARY 2007 .
WE MUST FIND OUR FRIENDS. POSSIBLY THEY'RE IN HOSPITALS, VILLAGES, PRIVATE HOUSES UNCONSCIOUS OR ILL AFTER STAYING IN WATER SOMEHOW.
IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING, PLS HELP us BRING OUR FRIENDS/KIDS/BROTHERS/SISTERS/BELOVED ONES BACK. WE STILL KEEP A HOPE AND WE WILL DO SO ANYWAY.
if the info is confidential, we will keep it confidential.
thank you for understanding!
 
In our hopes and prayers,

So thankful that the lone swimmer made it to shore.
 
My thoughts and prayers are with your friends and their families. I am sure it would be a great comfort to them to know of your efforts to bring them home. Good luck to you and your friends.
 
This is the translation of the accident description by a diver who reached the coast to call for help. It was written by himself (the Russian original is in his LJ blog - the reference is mentioned there as well)...


http://www.webdive.ru/forum.php?a=2&id_p=63&id_t=73

Maybe, this story could help somehow to those made a dive there that day or some days later to recall anything...

we keep collecting all the info and photos.
and searching for our friends.
pls, help us.
 
Man this is terrible! Being left out at sea is my biggest fear. Wish there was something I could do to help. We will pray for you and your friends.
 
This is relly terrible. My understanding from reading the survivor's description is that it was a drift dive. In the rather limited drift diving I've done the boat drifts on the surface along with a float or floats attached to a line that is held by one of the divers down below. Did these guys have floats? Its really the only way the people in the boat can know where the divers are.
 
That link doesn't work...
 
Wow! I hope somehow there is a good ending to this. Things like that make me glad I upgraded to big giant 6 foot 50 lb SMBs.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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