The dive team, the equipment, the boat, the safety protocol.
This is the journal's working operational document, describing the dive team composition, the equipment loadout for each dive type, the underwater photography rig, the boat-charter arrangement, the dive-safety protocol and the contingency plan for the worst-case scenarios. Revised every March before the spring season; the current version dates from March 2026.
The dive team.
The journal's dive team is six certified divers: the four editors (Tarek Ramadan, Mahmoud el-Sherbini, Iman Hosny, Sabri al-Banna), and two long-running contract divers (Karim el-Wazir, with the journal since 2018, and Ahmed Habib, since 2021). Five of the six are commercial-dive certified to the Egyptian Maritime Authority's professional standard; the sixth, Sabri al-Banna, is working toward his lead-diver qualification expected late 2026 and dives as a supervised buddy until then. The dive team's combined experience exceeds twelve thousand dives across the Alexandria coast since the team members' individual careers began.
Boat-charter arrangement.
The journal does not own a dive boat. We charter the MV Aboukir Star, a 14-metre purpose-built dive support vessel operated by a small Alexandria-based commercial dive-charter company. The vessel has been our chartered platform since 2018; we use the same boat and crew on every dive day to preserve operational continuity and the dive team's working familiarity with the boat. The charter agreement covers two thousand five hundred annual dive-hours and includes the boat's standard surface support, oxygen for surface intervals, two refilling banks for the dive tanks, and the boat's experienced skipper Ramy Ezzat who has worked the Alexandria coast since 1998.
Standard dive loadout.
Each diver dives with the following standard loadout: a twin 12-litre cylinder set on the back at the journal's standard fill pressure (220 bar), a pony cylinder for emergency redundancy, a buoyancy compensator with integrated weight pockets, a primary regulator with octopus secondary, a dive computer (Shearwater Perdix or Suunto EON Core depending on diver preference), a wrist-mounted compass, an underwater notebook with waterproof paper and graphite pencil, and a hand-held LED dive torch. The journal's standard dive depth is six to ten metres at the documented sites; the maximum operational depth is twelve metres, beyond which the journal does not dive even for institutional expeditions.
Underwater photography rig.
The journal's primary photographic rig is a Nauticam underwater housing for the Canon EOS R5 mirrorless camera with the Canon RF 16mm wide-angle for site overviews and the RF 100mm macro for find documentation. Two Inon Z-330 strobes are mounted on flexible arms with the strobes positioned for the calibrated lighting standard. The colour-reference card (X-Rite ColorChecker Passport) is mounted on a magnetic plate that can be quickly attached and removed without removing the housing. The rig has been in use since 2022, replacing the previous Sea&Sea housing system which the journal used from 2017 to 2021. A backup rig — Canon EOS R6 in a different Nauticam housing — accompanies every dive day in case of primary-rig failure; the backup is identical in operational specification to the primary.
Dive-safety protocol in brief.
The journal's dive-safety protocol is documented in detail in the internal protocol document and is reviewed annually. The headline rules: no solo dives at any site under any circumstance; every dive uses the buddy system with continuous proximity (the buddy team is never separated by more than three metres of visibility); no diver dives a third dive in a day; surface intervals are minimum sixty minutes between dives; tank-reserve protocol requires return to surface with a minimum 50 bar reserve in the primary cylinder; the boat's skipper retains the right to call any dive on weather or operational grounds and the dive team accepts the skipper's call without challenge. The protocol has been audited twice in our ten-year history (in 2019 and 2023) by an independent dive-safety consultant; both audits passed without findings requiring action.
Operational record.
The journal's dive operations have logged zero diver injuries beyond minor ear-equalisation issues and one minor laceration from a sharp coral-encrusted block (treated on the boat, returned to dive operations the same week). We have had three operational close-call incidents in ten years — two from sudden visibility drops in storm conditions (both ended with the dive aborted and the team safely back on the boat) and one from a strobe-arm tangle that resolved itself in twenty seconds. The close-call incidents are documented in the protocol's running incident log and are reviewed at the annual March protocol revision.
The contingency plan.
Each dive day's plan includes a written contingency for the three worst-case scenarios. Diver-medical emergency: immediate boat return to Alexandria Port with the on-board oxygen, then ambulance to the El-Mowassah Hospital decompression chamber (the Alexandria coast's only operational chamber, with which the journal has a standing emergency-coordination agreement). Boat failure offshore: the boat carries dual-redundant communication systems and a satellite emergency beacon; the Egyptian Coast Guard is the primary response. Severe weather rolling in: the skipper has authority to call the dive at any time; the dive team accepts the call without challenge. All three scenarios have been rehearsed in dry runs at the annual March protocol review.
The companion conservation protocols document covers the site-stewardship questions. The methodology page sets out how the dive operational output becomes a published field report. The about page covers the dive team's individual backgrounds in more detail.