DIVING NEWS
Gulf Air tips scale towards divers
Good news for heavily laden scuba divers heading east – Gulf Air has added them to its list of passengers entitled to concessionary baggage allowances, with up to 15kg of dive-gear permitted above the standard allowance.
The airline, the national carrier of the island kingdom of Bahrain, operates direct flights to a number of diving destinations, including Egypt (Sharm el Sheikh), the Maldives, Cyprus, Greece and Oman.
As standard, passengers are entitled to check-in up to two bags free of charge, depending on fare type and route, and up to three if they have Gulf Air Falconflyer status. Relevant allowances can be checked here.
In other news concerning Bahrain-based aircraft, it has emerged that the 70m-long sunken Boeing 747 that forms the centrepiece of the Dive Bahrain marine park that opened last year recently sustained “major damage”. The heavy nets of two illegal shrimp-trawlers are reported to have come into contact with the fuselage.
13 February 2020
Marine investigators have been using radar and tracking data to identify the vessels, which were contravening a ban on trawl-nets and had entered the two-mile exclusion zone around the 100,000 sq m underwater theme park.
Repair work is under way on the 747, alongside continuing efforts to complete other artificial-reef structures promised for the park.
“This incident serves as further evidence of the profoundly negative effect fishing with trawling nets has on the seabed ecosystem, reefs and on the marine environment overall,” said Dr Mohamed Bin Daina, Chief Executive of Bahrain’s Supreme Council of the Environment.
