167 meter dive - New Record in Aqaba, Jordan
Rod Abbotson and Mark Ellyatt completed a dive to 167m in Aqaba, Jordan on July 29th 2011. This was the deepest scuba dive ever conducted in the waters off Aqaba, Jordan since Rod & Dorit Yoseph dived to 144m in October 2009. In March this year Seastar Diving instructor Rohan Cadzow hatched a plan to beat the record set by Dorit & myself with the help of a group of ex-servicemen who are out here setting up the new counter terrorism training facility in Jordan for King Abdullah 2. Then Rohan left the project for personal reasons. At this point the media machine had started rolling on the project and the sponsors were getting worried it may not happen. So the Dive Aqaba tec team stepped in to help achieve the teams goals and keep the sponsors happy. Mark Ellyatt was out with us conducting some rebreather training, so agreed to take over the planning of the dive. Mark, Rod and George used Pelagian DCCCRs for the dive. Duncan Baillie and Jake Link used OC trimix, Thaer Juqman was deep air support. The whole dive took 3 hrs and 10 minutes. Special thanks to Mark Ellyatt for his Inspired Training which made the dive possible, George Ionita for sponsoring his trip here and providing deep support and to Andy Fritz for his versatile Pelagian DCCCR's.
