The Wreck of the Salem Express off Safaga in the Red Sea, Egypt
The Salem Express ran in 20 minutes on December 15, 1991. 470 people will drown and 180 will survive. This terrible tragedy occurred off the town of Safaga in Egypt in the Red Sea. The passengers were pilgrims returning from a trip to La Mecque to Saudi Arabia. Today, it is a marine cemetery because all the bodies were not found and it is strictly forbidden to penetrate inside by respect for the families of the missing people. Salem Express is 115 meters long for a width of 17,83 meters and a draft of 4,92 meters. It is a very large wreck which it is impossible to discover in only one diving more especially as it rests on its side on a sandy bottom of 30 meters.
The capricious weather and the strong currents do not make it possible to dive every day on this site. We took this photograph during our second dive because we had decided to remain with a 15 meters depth: we had more time to dive to find the good camera angle. During the first dive, we went down to the sandy bootom and we photographed the whole of the details like the launches, the chimneys and the iron sheets which strew the ground. The poor visibility did not enable us to account for the size and the events which take place this day of 1991. For the second dive, we privileged the natural light with a very wide angle for better accounting for the state of the wreck.
