the Red, the Dead and the Med???

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Mako Mark

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A couple of years ago, I did a little road trip:

If you leave Dahab early in the morning, and rent a car in Elat, and drive to haifa, it is possible to swim in the Red, the Dead, and the Med in the same day. I have done it.

I want to know if anyone has dived it?
 
Dived the Red and the Med a few times, swam in the Dead back in '86. The water tastes horrible!

No vis, and you would need lotsa lead in the dead!!

Seadeuce
 
You could also aptly coin these bodies the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Red Sea is fantastic, the Med is generally pretty crummy (exceptions of course exist), and the Dead is most certainly BAD.
I saw a TV special on the ONE boat maintained in the Dead Sea. Some loony dude keeps it up for tours and scientific research, but he has to don full on protective gear every day or two and knock huge hunks of precipitated salt off the hull... else the boat will SINK UNDER THE WEIGHT.

Apparently almost anything put into the Dead Sea is a magnet for rapid salt precipitation. There are even ISLANDS in there made up exclusively of giant halite blocks. The "mountains" in the area are pure salt, by the way.

Diving in the Dead Sea is hazardous to your health. It's very bad for your equipment too. If salt vapors get into your lungs you're in for some serious hurt. Aspiration of the water there is high risk and supposedly kills people.
 
archman:
a TV special on the ONE boat maintained in the Dead Sea. Some loony dude keeps it up for tours and scientific research, but he has to don full on protective gear every day or two and knock huge hunks of precipitated salt off the hull...


.

I saw that too, the boat was called "Lot's Wife" after the biblical carachter that was turned to a pillar of salt.

archman:
the Dead Sea is hazardous to your health. It's very bad for your equipment too. If salt vapors get into your lungs you're in for some serious hurt. Aspiration of the water there is high risk and supposedly kills people.

Wait a minute, lots of people go there for their health, the water cures all sorts of uncurable skin disorders, but yeah, I rekon it would be pretty rough on dive gear.

I have just never met anyone that has actually tried to dive the dead sea though even out of curiosity.
 
cancun mark:
Wait a minute, lots of people go there for their health, the water cures all sorts of uncurable skin disorders, but yeah, I rekon it would be pretty rough on dive gear.

If it was the same show I saw, you missed the later parts where they discussed the perils of swimming in the Dead Sea, specifically the high risk of tearing your lungs out from aspirating the water, or via excessive exposure from the vapours. I'm not sure if they advocated wearing gas masks, but that was the take-home message I got.

There's very good reason nothing lives in the Dead Sea except halophiles. They'd die.
 
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