After several hours trapped in the air pocket, the dive guide, Youssef, wanted to try to swim through the boat, but Lucianna and Christophe persuaded him not to. "Stay with us because they are going to come to get our bodies, so they will find us," Lucianna recalls telling him.
An odd decision, I would have thought he was a good diver, so presumeably also a decent free diver, knew the boat well, could alert rescuers to the trapped people, and would not use up oxygen when gone from the bubble.
Being an advanced scuba diver is absolutely no indication of one’s ability to freedive. You Absolutly can not compare the two besides both taking place underwater.
On top of that, even if this guide was a Divemaster which is far from guaranteed given the other safety failings from this company, being an advanced Divemaster does not equate to one’s ability to cave dive. Survivors state the lack of lighting in the boat and so I’m assuming he would have had to navigate the boat in complete dark under water. So while not exactly cave diving, it’s equatable. An activity that’s insanely dangerous to anyone, even Divemasters that don’t have cavern or cave experience.
There’s a reason there’s a grim reaper sign at the entrance of caves in popular dive locations.
The Egyptian dive guides are often pretty good freedivers, especially when they started out as boat boys, they often freedive every day to fasten ropes to the reef.
Still, deciding that the guide should not try does not even make sense if there was only a 5% chance he'd make it, from the two tourists point of view.
Maybe not exactly at that point, but the article said they could hear the rescue helicopters, but still had to wait more than a day in darkness to be rescued.
Noises are also very different above and below water - even when you’re in an air pocket. They knew they were still at the surface and trapped in a capsized vessel.
Still, rationally thinking, which is presuming a lot in the situation, I can't find any real advantage to the two tourists of having the dive guide not try.
There reason she gave was "Stay with us because they are going to come to get our bodies" so I think they were beyond worrying about anyone's wellbeing :( What a nightmare.
An odd decision, I would have thought he was a good diver, so presumeably also a decent free diver, knew the boat well, could alert rescuers to the trapped people, and would not use up oxygen when gone from the bubble.