Safety at sea should never be compromised. Last year, Maritime Survey Australia (International) Marine Surveyor Mick Uberti conducted safety inspections on dive boats in the Red Sea, uncovering alarming deficiencies. He spoke with Joe Inwood of the BBC News about the state of the Egyptian Dive Liveaboard vessels and how we have developed an innovative Star rating system to encourage a positive safety culture. Our findings underscore the urgent need for improved safety standards in the dive boat industry. Let’s work together to create safer seas. Here is a link to the Podcast that Mick completed with the “Scuba Goat”.
Maritime Survey International was engaged by our client to complete the inspection of “Liveaboard” vessels in Egypt in January 2023 and January 2024. These inspections were to ensure that the vessels were safe and fit for purpose for a charter of up to 3 months. In total we inspected 14 vessels a few of them did not warrant more than 5 to 10 minutes and were clearly not fit for purpose. The survey inspection was to gather facts to provide a professional opinion of the vessel’s safety, structure, systems, cosmetics, levels of compliance with currently applicable mandatory and voluntary standards, and best or common practice. These Surveys are intended to give potential charter companies and guests (Divers) enough information to make an informed decision. The findings on all the vessels were very similar. All of the vessel presented interiors, cabins and sleeping berths that are in good to very good condition, as this is the selling point for the charter operator. Many of the deficiencies are not expensive to repair or replace, and in most cases, compliance with safety and contemporary standards is simply unknown to the crew and operators as they are not educated in this space. Following these inspections we contacted The Egyptian Authority for Maritime Safety (EAMS) as they concerned authority regarding the technical standards, compliance and registration, and its main office is in Alexandria. EAMS never responded to our emails. Excursion vessels with capacity more than 10 tons and which go beyond the regional waters must be registered. EAMS, and issue their Registration Certificates and revalidate their Sea worthiness certificates and the navigational permissions required.
These regulations appear to be poorly enforced. Passengers have a reasonable expectation that a vessel that plies for hire and reward is fit for purpose. It is of no surprise that vessels that are not obligated or enforced to meet minimum safety standards, do not. The Egyptian Maritime Authorities, for whatever reason, do not enforce their own obligations such as the Collision Regulations and the Domestic Commercial Vessel industry in Egypt plies its trade largely unregulated
A Bachelor-thesis Investigation of a series of accidents involving yachts for diving vacations has been completed by Institut für Schiffbau und maritime Technik Justus Schiszler. In collaboration with Justus and the team at Taucher who are passionate about diving, we decided to put together a Checklist using the Caribbean SCV Code 2021 and presented this to around 40 Dive operators. Our team then developed the MSI safety score that has been applied to the vessels following our inspection and we have listed the vessels that have had a score of 3 or more here.
The BBC also interviewed us and reported on this in an article in relation to the Sea Story. We are happy to promote the safe operators and hopefully have more vessel operators sign up to our safety audits not just in Egypt but globally.
