Seemingly premature attempts by the Egyptian Red Sea authorities to pin the Sea Story dive liveaboard sinking on a freak wave, and by the boat’s operator to block potentially damaging reports by survivors, have emerged from a month-long investigation into the fatal incident by a BBC News team.
Sea Story had left Port Ghalib for a six-day trip on 24 November carrying 31 international guests, three dive-guides and 12 Egyptian crew, as previously reported on Divernet. Several divers had been “upgraded” at the last minute from the boat they had originally booked, even though the itinerary would be different.
Also read: ‘Be cautious selecting Red Sea dive-boats’ warns MAIB
The boat capsized and sank early the following morning, leaving 11 people dead or missing, including a British couple.
Eleven of the 35 survivors, mainly experienced scuba divers, have now been interviewed by the BBC. They reported that within hours of being brought ashore they were being “interrogated”, either in their hospital beds or at a resort where they had been accommodated, by people claiming to be ‘judges’.
Also read: Tourist boat capsizes in Gulf of Suez
They also described being pressured to sign witness statements that, in a clear conflict of interest, had been translated from English into Arabic by an employee of the Egyptian boat operator, Dive Pro Liveaboard.
Some claimed that they were interrogated by someone they had been led to believe was an official investigator, only to find later that he was a Dive Pro Liveaboard dive-guide.
He and other employees had urged survivors to sign waivers stating: “I do not accuse anyone of any criminal wrongdoing”. One diver said that such a waiver was handed to him while he was still giving his witness statement, and a British doctor described being told that she couldn't leave the room until all the statements had been completed.
Some divers had refused to sign the documents, and none had been allowed to retain copies, though some who translated them using phone apps described the omission of “damning details” that they had reported. Similar practices with witness statements have been reported before in the aftermath of Red Sea liveaboard incidents.
Even as one group tried to leave to fly home, a Dive Pro Liveaboard representative was said to have tried to fool them into signing waivers. He had claimed that the documents were clearance papers to get through airport checkpoints, according to a US diver who warned the others not to sign.
Freak wave
BBC interviewees have also accused Egyptian officials of deciding in advance shortly after the vessel’s capsize occurred to blame it on a freak wave.
Oceanographer Dr Simon Boxall repeated his assertion made at the time of the incident that a 4m wave could not have been the cause of the sinking in the prevailing conditions, and blamed it on pilot or boat-design error or both. Survivors agreed that the conditions had presented no great problems when swimming off the wreck.
However, one diver who asked to see a copy of the investigators’ final report was told that there would be no point, because “the only one responsible for this is the sea”.
In the first part of the BBC report, survivors stated that during the night Sea Story had seemed to be rocking and rolling more than they would have expected given unexceptional weather, with heavy unsecured furniture sliding around the deck and a small inflatable nearly lost overboard.
Just before 3am Sea Story had flipped onto its side with a “loud bang”, the engines died and all the lights went out.
Nearly all the dead or missing had been accommodated on the starboard side of the boat that hit the sea. Of people who made it to the deck, impeded by loose furniture and fittings, few had managed to find a life-jacket. One said that theirs was not functioning properly, and that the light had no batteries.
Others who managed to board life-rafts saw the captain and a number of crew already there, the captain reportedly having taken one of the three blankets provided for himself. The safety briefing had promised food and water on the rafts but guests told the BBC there was none. A torch was not working and the flares had already been used.
35 hours in air-pocket
Although the survivors agree that the boat sank before 3am, local authorities claim that they received a distress signal only at about 5.30am. It took rescue vessels eight hours to reach the rafts as they drifted east, and rescuers were also slow to reach Sea Story itself, survivors told the BBC.
Couple Lucianna Galetta and Christophe Lemmens had been unable to find their life-jackets and were trapped by water and debris in a corridor.
They ended up in an air-pocket in the engine-room in the stern section that was protruding above the water, later joined by dive instructor Youssef al-Faramawy.
“We had no communication with the outside, nothing. No-one tried to see if there was someone alive in there,” said Galetta. “I was so ready to die. We didn't think that someone would come.“
They were found only after a traumatic 35hr ordeal by al-Faramawy’s uncle Khattab al-Faramawi, a local instructor who had volunteered to search through the submerged corridors.
Divers also rescued two people from another air pocket in a lower-deck cabin, and four bodies were recovered. However, survivors questioned why the Egyptian navy supervising the operation appeared not to have been able to deploy its own divers.

Still missing are Devon couple Jenny Cawson and Tarig Sinada, said to have always researched dive-boats carefully but among those switched to Sea Story at the last minute, and accommodated on the starboard side of the main deck.
Family and friends told the BBC how Egyptian officials had told them that Sea Story had not been found – even as they were watching TV news reports showing the stricken liveaboard.
Accusing the authorities of a cover-up to protect the tourism industry, they are now calling for an open investigation of the sinking. Neither the Egyptian government nor Dive Pro Liveaboard responded to the BBC’s requests for responses to the allegations contained in its reports.
Divernet similarly received no reply from the operator after seeking comments when the incident occurred, although after a fire on another of its boats, Sea Legend, in which a German guest died last March, it had responded – though only to say that it could not comment before receiving a final report from the Public Prosecution Office.
The full BBC reports by Joe Inwood, Part 1 and Part 2, can be read on the BBC News site.
Also on Divernet: 8 still missing after ‘huge wave’ sank Red Sea liveaboard, British divers missing from Sea Story named, Survivors speak after fatal Red Sea dive-boat fire