British technical divers Leigh Cunningham and Mark Andrews claim to have carried out the world's deepest wreck dive, after descending 205m to the wreck of the Jolande, off Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.

Andrews and Cunningham (seated) and support team. Photo: Adam Butler

In May, Cunningham and Andrews made a series of dives on the steep reef slope down which the cargo ship careered in 1985. Diving to 160m, they found the bow and other strewn wreckage. In mid-December, backed by an international team of 10 support divers, the men returned and located the deepest section, the stern.

"We dived over a five-day period, with three days of deep-air diving to acclimatise and survey the wreckage trail," Mark Andrews told Divernet. "We then did one trimix dive to the bow of the wreck at 155m, and another dive to the stern of the wreck at 205m."

For their deepest dive, the divers had just 5.5 minutes of bottom time on a total dive time of 3hr 24min. For this and other deep dives, Sharm's search and rescue services and hyperbaric chamber were put on standby in case of a serious diving incident.

Related links
Cunningham/Andrews' May 2005 dive


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