Recovery operation

Recovery operation in The Canyon Dive Site (Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt) from deep cavern “Neptun Cave”, 76 meters. October 13, 2007

I received the call late evening October 12, 2007 that Alexey Kupchin, 49 y.o., Instructor from Sankt-Petersburg, didn’t come back from the dive to The Neptune Cave.

We started the recovery operation early morning of 13.10.2007. I entered the water with my support team at 06-40 a.m. We reached the end of the Canyon and support divers stopped on 40 meters, waiting for me with one of my stages (oxygen). I entered into cavern alone in doubles with trimix (Tx16/45) and stage with first decomix (EAN39) and soon found the corps in the very end of tunnel, after the restriction, 76 meter depth. There was the line in the cave with an empty reel at the end with two lead weights on it and a small lamp on top (probably strobe light). I moved 3 meters further and reached the cavern restriction and saw the body in fin-pivot  position located after. The depth was 76 meters. The victim’s head was oriented inside the cave , so I didn’t see whether his regulator was in the mouth as well as his mask on. The cavern was a bit silty, that is not common here (usually visibility inside the cavern is very clear, but there is a lot of mud and fine sand on the bottom). I unclipped my stage with nitrox and left it in the tunnel before restriction and entered it. I spent around 15 minutes dragging the body through the restriction back to the tunnel– difficult job in zero viz. However my previous experience allowed me to complete this work successfully. Then things ran easer – the tunnel became wider and finally I retrieved the body from the cavern. At 55 meters level the body was handed over to support divers and slowly brought to the surface. I spent around 70 minutes completing my deco and finished the dive.

            I retrieved all equipment of the victim, computers (VR3 and TUSA IQ700) among it. All equipment was passed to Pavel Sidorenko (TDI Instructor, head of “Torch Divers” dive center - the victim used this dive facility) in the presence of the local dive instructors and policeman.

            I made the quick field check of the victim’s equipment – no failures. There was still around 80 bar of air in doubles and around 160 bar of EAN60 in the stage tank. The smell of air in doubles was normal.

My support divers were Alexey Grishin (TDI Instructor) and Anna Kozlova (TDI Instructor, NACD, NSS-CDS, TDI Cave Diver).

Used equipment: 3 doubles with manifolds (Tx 16/45 – me, Air – support team), EAN39, oxygen – 2 tanks.

Andrey Chistyakov. NACD member. TDI Advanced Trimix Instructor-Trainer 9838, TDI Intro to Cave Instructor, SDI Instructor-Trainer, NSS-CDS, NACD, TDI Cave Diver.