Trip Report Red Sea Aggressor IV Dec 2024

[tesstttdive]

Dedalus and St. John with Red Sea Aggressor IV: The experience of this trip was very bad with a lot of RISKS and dead reefs!!! I do NOT recommend it to anyone!!!

To present who I am: I would like to mention that I have previously been working as a Master Scuba Dive Trainer, Cave Diver, Underwater Photographer in Mexico, DR and Thailand for about 5-7 years around the millennium. I have about 1200 dives. Today I work as a Business Development Director to plan commercial drug sourcing over 1 million Euro/USD for global clinical trials where I was responsible for North America for a 130K size employee company. Trying to say that I have many dive and travel experiences.

Sign up: It started with the sign up to join this trip. Things are very disorganized and takes a lot of time, patience away from you and leave you irritated.

Aggressor IV: The boat has terrible conditions for the price.

Food: Half of the boat got food poisoning

RISKS: They put my life at risk as I had asked them to dive on air but at half of the trip I realized that they were giving me Nitrox. The risk was that they say you can go to the depth of your certification. This means that if I would have seen a shark or something interesting, I would have followed it a bit deeper for a short time. Anyone that has Nitrox knowledge would know that one shouldn’t pass the partial pressure or 1.4-1.6 atmosphere of O2 as it would lead to O2 poisoning and could cause convulsions. So to give me a gas that was not agreed upon is a life threatening risk!!!! Not only did they put my life at risk, they wanted to charge me for the Nitrox on top of it and were arguing. Are you serious!!!

In addition the guides were forcing the groups to swim hard against the current as PLANNED dives. Especially at the end of the trip with 3-5 dives/day and accumulated N2 in your body, this is a huge risk for decompression sickness. This dive profile once again was planned and mentioned in the briefing. Very BAD!!!

Staff: 50/50 pleasant/rude

Service: We had requested to be notified to upgrade to the better suite if there were cancelations. They kept saying it was not available. Then they requested that we would pay $400 instead of the original cost of $200 once we were onsite. This was later to a different couple given for free (which we found out at the end and were happy for their sake) but we were not offered it for free since were first offered the cabin and said we wanted it. But for the price that the webpage had requested.

Reefs: Dead!!! Dedalus and St. John with Red Sea Aggressor IV

Fellow Divers: Lovely

 

[also_anon_dc]

They put my life at risk as I had asked them to dive on air but at half of the trip I realized that they were giving me Nitrox.

This is an egregious oversight by the boat crew but also partially your fault for not verifying what's in your tank.

 

[Jai Bar]

I feel bad for you, been at similar route a couple of years ago, reefs definitely were not dead.. I wonder if it was caused by higher than usual temperatures last summer, or some other causes such as over fishing? My last LOB in Egypt was almost a year ago to Ras Mo & Abu Nuhas, reefs were in good condition, aside from typical seasonal changes.

Regarding Nitrox, many Egyptian dive boats struggle to achieve oxygen percentages exceeding 30%. However, providing Nitrox without informing divers and checking their certifications seems bad. It seems to me like this was a particular misunderstanding, I find it hard to believe it's commonplace.

 

[Dana23]

I was in the Red Sea 2 months ago (Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone) and the reefs were largely dead.

I also went on the Red Sea Aggressor IV in 2023 and would not go back on that boat. The cruise director had a bad attitude, and there was only 1 good dive guide. Food was ok though and the guests were great.

 

[Dan]

What EAN did you get and what your dive profile looked like at the given EAN?

A short dip (< 2 minutes) usually is no problem for me at PPO2 1.7

Trip Report Post in thread 'December 24-31, 2017 Palau Trip Report'

Jan 13, 2018

Day 2
The second day, other than the Peleliu high voltage diving, was meh & long. We did 5 dives. Visibility was great (>100 ft / 30m).

In Peleliu Corner diving, we started from 100 ft (30m) deep calm water near the sloping bottom of the Peleliu Corner and slowly ascent to the ridge, ready with our hook on our free hand. As we ascent to the top of the ridge, we felt the current picking up and pushing us over the ridge. As soon as we passed the tip of the ridge, then we nailed the tip of the hook onto rock surface that looked like a good crevice to hook in. No time to mesh around...

• Dan

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“After lunch we did a 3rd dive of the day in Barnum’s Wall. During dive briefing the lead guide, Ripon mentioned to us to be on the lookout for Zebra shark, which sometime can be seen lying on a sandy bottom. I mentioned to him that I have never seen one before and it would be great to let me know if he spotted one. As we were cruising around 100 feet deep along the wall, Ripon turned to me and pointed to the bottom and gave a shark sign (an open hand on the forehead). I could see a shark-looking fish about 2 inches long on the bottom from our level. We descent to 120 feet deep to get a better look. It was just lying there sleeping. Then I pointed to my camera and to the fish as a sign whether I can get down for a closer look. He raised his index and middle fingers (like a victory sign) and pointed to his dive computer. I interpreted it as I have 2 minutes to descend, take the dang picture and ascend to a safe level. I did as told and took the fish picture, below, at 147 feet (45m). That was the deepest depth I ever done in my 13 years of diving and may not do it again for sometime ”

 

[Ukmc]

While I despise the negative posts by anyone who joins the board just to rant and many of these new members we never see again (hopefully this new member sticks around and contributes to the community) - It brings up an interesting point (really a pet peave of mine, so I apologize )
I hate it when people on air tell me that they don’t need to analyze or know how to analyze the tank . Furthermore, it is a disservice on the behalf of training agencies not to require open water divers (non nitrox certified) to learn how to analyze the tank. This is especially true when one is on the boat with the divers diving different mixtures. Arguably, it is a lot more risk to a diver to get a richer than expected oxygen mixture Then the other way around.

 

[Dan]

I was on Red Sea Aggressor 1 temporary replacement boat, Scuba Scene 5 years ago. It was not bad then.

Trip Report Thread 'BDE Trip Report, 21-28 December, 2019'

Feb 9, 2020

Summary
This is an eight-day (21-28 December, 2019) liveaboard trip to Red Sea BDE (Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone) route, with Scuba Scene, Red Sea Aggressor 1 (RSA1) replacement, after RSA got burnt & sank in November 2019. The itinerary, as shown in Table 1, includes 6 days of diving, 3 dives / day, except on the last 2 days of diving, there were 4 and 2 dives / day, respectively.

Figure 1 shows the Scuba Scene cruising routes (marked by yellow dash loop line) stopping in Brothers, Daedalus and Elpinestone, which is commonly known as BDE route.

We did 1st day of...

• Dan
• bde egypt liveaboard oceanic whitetip shark red sea red sea aggressor scuba scene
• Replies: 21
• Forum: Red Sea

• 

 

[Soap]

Dedalus and St. John with Red Sea Aggressor IV: The experience of this trip was very bad with a lot of RISKS and dead reefs!!! I do NOT recommend it to anyone!!!

To present who I am: I would like to mention that I have previously been working as a Master Scuba Dive Trainer, Cave Diver, Underwater Photographer in Mexico, DR and Thailand for about 5-7 years around the millennium. I have about 1200 dives. Today I work as a Business Development Director to plan commercial drug sourcing over 1 million Euro/USD for global clinical trials where I was responsible for North America for a 130K size employee company. Trying to say that I have many dive and travel experiences.

Sign up: It started with the sign up to join this trip. Things are very disorganized and takes a lot of time, patience away from you and leave you irritated.

Aggressor IV: The boat has terrible conditions for the price.

Food: Half of the boat got food poisoning

RISKS: They put my life at risk as I had asked them to dive on air but at half of the trip I realized that they were giving me Nitrox. The risk was that they say you can go to the depth of your certification. This means that if I would have seen a shark or something interesting, I would have followed it a bit deeper for a short time. Anyone that has Nitrox knowledge would know that one shouldn’t pass the partial pressure or 1.4-1.6 atmosphere of O2 as it would lead to O2 poisoning and could cause convulsions. So to give me a gas that was not agreed upon is a life threatening risk!!!! Not only did they put my life at risk, they wanted to charge me for the Nitrox on top of it and were arguing. Are you serious!!!

In addition the guides were forcing the groups to swim hard against the current as PLANNED dives. Especially at the end of the trip with 3-5 dives/day and accumulated N2 in your body, this is a huge risk for decompression sickness. This dive profile once again was planned and mentioned in the briefing. Very BAD!!!

Staff: 50/50 pleasant/rude

Service: We had requested to be notified to upgrade to the better suite if there were cancelations. They kept saying it was not available. Then they requested that we would pay $400 instead of the original cost of $200 once we were onsite. This was later to a different couple given for free (which we found out at the end and were happy for their sake) but we were not offered it for free since were first offered the cabin and said we wanted it. But for the price that the webpage had requested.

Reefs: Dead!!! Dedalus and St. John with Red Sea Aggressor IV

Fellow Divers: Lovely

I'm just drafting a summary of our Red Sea Aggressor II (non) trip, so it's interesting to see this. As I understood it from crew on our boat, the local owners (Scuba Adventure Fleet) had pulled some crew members from our boat to add to yours, so that she could depart as planned. We weren't so fortunate.

Terrible safety issues for you

 

[Dan]

I'm just drafting a summary of our Red Sea Aggressor II (non) trip, so it's interesting to see this. As I understood it from crew on our boat, the local owners (Scuba Adventure Fleet) had pulled some crew members from our boat to add to yours, so that she could depart as planned. We weren't so fortunate.

Terrible safety issues for you

Wow! They cancelled your trip at last minute? I’ll be really upset if it happened to me after going long hours of flight from US.

 

[scubadada]

I was on Red Sea Aggressor 1 temporary replacement boat, Scuba Scene 5 years ago. It was not bad then...

I'm also glad I did BDE and the southern route years ago. Both weeks were quite good on the RSA I

Trip Report Thread 'Red Sea Aggressor April-May 2016'

Oct 5, 2016

I dived the southern route and then the northern route on the Red Sea Aggressor (RSA) in back to back weeks between April 24 and May 6, 2016. This was my 1st experience with the Aggressor Fleet

Reservations and logistics: I was living in Basel, Switzerland when I made this trip. I made my own airline reservations and flew nonstop from Zurich to Hurghada on Edelweiss, a subsidiary of Swiss Air. I made land transport and hotel reservations though Aggressor Adventure Travel, they were great, went flawlessly. I did a day of land based diving with Emperor Divers prior to boarding the RSA...

• scubadada
• Replies: 3
• Forum: Red Sea

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