Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
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Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
Irish safety diver Steve (Stephen) Keenan died on July 22nd, 2017, while assisting Alessia Zechinni to cross The Arch in Dahab. Lily Crespy was part of the safety team who was there for the dive and recently shared her view of how the events unfolded during a Freedive Cafe Podcast episode.
I knew Steve since 2015 when I was going to train for depth, we became friends, he was my safety and my coach. When I was in the Philippines later on, he even came for holidays and to train so we became really closer friends. And of course, later on, when I started working for him, he was my boss and we were hanging out all the time.
In 2017, Alessia Zecchini came to train at Dahab Freedivers, she knew Steve from Vertical Blue, and I think they had created a kind of close bond, they had a good connection. So she decided to come & train at Dahab, he was her coach at the time, preparing her for the World Championship at Roatan. She wanted to cross The Arch, so she was planning to do FIM on the way down, crossing The Arch in No Fins, and then FIM up. I was also going to go to Roatan, so I was lucky enough to train with Alessia at Dahab. I could watch her dives and she was at the complete top of her game. She had a super level of fitness and she was really strong in the water. So the plan of crossing The Arch seemed like an absolutely easy, piece of cake dive.
Steve organized the whole thing, he had organized crossings of The Arch many times, and he had already crossed it himself. He put together a team, most of us were from Dahab Freedivers school, instructors, or quite experienced freedivers & deep divers. We rehearsed everything, the timing to go down, the timing to cross the distance of The Arch, it was all very planned, everybody had their role and we all knew what to do. We all had our roles to play.
What happened is small things did not go as they were supposed to. She went down totally fine, as planned, the timing was exactly what it should have been, she started crossing under The Arch, and under there, there were two tech divers who were filming her, and Steve had told her that the tech divers would be on her left so she should try to swim close to the reef wall on her right, so she doesn’t bump into them.
So Alessia followed these instructions and stayed close to the reef wall. She didn’t notice any change of light, and because it was her first time crossing The Arch, she didn’t know the location in advance. So she didn’t see any change of light or any clue that she was out of The Arch so she kind of kept going following the reef wall to her right and she kind of started to swim a little bit to her right and away from the rope which was in the middle, or a little bit to the left. So this was the first thing that went a little wrong. The second thing was that of course, she was negatively buoyant because The Arch is at 50, 55 meters down, so she swam a little bit faster than what we had simulated in the bay, so she exited The Arch a little bit faster than we thought.
And there is another factor, which was probably the main one. Steve was the first safety. We had a buoy with a rope at the exit of The Arch, it was maintained in place by one person, and the rope was right in the middle of the exit of The Arch. Steve was going down in variable weight and was supposed to be there when Alessia would exit The Arch, in case she didn’t see the rope or needed to be escorted to it. So he was supposed to be there a few seconds in advance, make a sound to her and she would come to the rope. He would give me a couple of strong pulls and he would signal to me on the surface that they are starting the ascent, and I was going to be the second safety at 25 meters, and there was going to be another third safety at 15-20 meters.
I was supposed to give the countdown to Steve for his variable weight dive, of course, we had timed everything, everything was on the clock, we had people in the Blue Hole signaling us across the surface when Alessia had started the dive, when she had started to enter The Arch, so we knew exactly when to start the countdown for Steve’s dive. I started to give him his countdown and at some point, he told me “give me 10 more seconds”. I was like “ok”, I had no idea why - I still don’t know and I will never know - and during these moments you can’t really start a discussion, you can’t ask questions, the guy is preparing for a pretty challenging dive, so you don’t want to interfere with his breath up or anything. And, you know, he is the boss, he is the guy who organized everything, so I trust him. You ask me for 10 more seconds, I’ll give you 10 more seconds.
And then he went down, and he was 10 seconds late and Alessia was a little bit early, and by the time he arrived at the bottom, I think Alessia was quite far away from the rope, so he sprinted to her, we have all this footage on video from the tech divers, so we saw that he made a really massive sprint down there to catch up with her. And then, I guess, he decided that it was not worth it swimming back to the rope so they just started to ascend right there, in the blue. Alessia had no fins on, so she was swimming with no fins, and he was following her with his bifins. From what I’ve been told, because there was also a photographer scuba diving who was there at 40 meters, and was supposed to film the ascent, she saw that something was happening, so she followed them to take film or picture the whole thing. So she told us that during the first part, Alessia was swimming by herself and he was just following her, escorting her, and towards the last part of the ascent he helped her out just by grabbing her hips and helping her to swim back to the surface.
I think Alessia didn’t lose consciousness, she arrived at the surface still conscious, maybe a little bit hypoxic, or out of it, or a little bit shocked, or whatever, but I don’t think she blacked out. But during the whole swim back up, the current had pushed them very far away. For the people who know Dahab, they ended up at The Saddle, which is kinda bit away from the exit of The Arch, and I think, from what I’ve been told, it took a little while until Alessia realized that Steve was face down on the surface, not moving, not breathing. She reacted and turned him around, and they started asking for help but there was a big group of snorkelers at the same spot, who are always, you know, splashing and loud, so it was a mix of factors who took a bit of time for us to realize, first of all, that they were there. We were wondering where are they, like, I went down like I was supposed to, I didn’t see anyone, I was panicking & freaking out, like “where are they, are they under The Arch”, looking for them everywhere on the surface and took a while to understand that they were there, super far away, with no idea what the hell happened and how did they end up there.
It’s the team of people who were inside The Blue Hole for the start of the dive who arrived there first and started to swim back to shore with Steve unconscious, doing rescue breaths, and everything. In the meantime, I was swimming, trying to match, so I could meet them on the way with the oxygen tank, of course, we had an oxygen tank in the water. And I kind of caught up with them, more or less, inside The Blue Hole. We supported Steve with one of the buoys of someone, some other person who was there, and I started to give him rescue breaths with oxygen. There was a lot of foam, I don’t think there was any squeeze, there was no blood from what I saw, but there was a lot of foam coming out. So it was clear that there was no point staying and trying to do rescue breaths in the water, so we continued swimming to shore, giving him rescue breaths with the oxygen all the way back. Then, on shore, I did whatever I could, like CPR and all this.
Unfortunately at the time, there was no AD at The Blue Hole, so we couldn’t use an AD, and also it was the time when the ambulances were not allowed to go all the way to The Blue Hole and wait there. They had to stop at the parking place for the taxis. We did CPR but we had to put him in a taxi and bring the taxi to where the ambulance was and then the ambulance took him to the hospital. I arrived at the hospital, later on, I didn’t go with them in the taxi, but I heard that the guy in the ambulance was not perfectly equipped for these situations, let’s say. You know, it’s Egypt and unfortunately, it’s not always the best level of health care. And when I arrived at the hospital they told us that he never revived. That’s the whole story.