The second round of the #apneaworldtour: the Red Sea

Into the second round! Apnea freshman Volker Roth took the DAVOSA Apnea Diver Automatic to a freediving workshop on a dive safari ship in the southernmost Red Sea. The goal: a long-awaited rendezvous with a manatee. Here is the report:

My name is Volker Roth. I’m a gardener and a freediving beginner. I started freediving or apnea diving after I went to Egypt with a girlfriend. We had been told about a place, a bay, where there was a manatee. Now I’m a pretty outgoing person. My friends say I’m very communicative and don’t have any inhibitions about talking to strangers in an open way. So I didn’t go up to any of the packed tourist boats, but instead talked to a local fisherman, who said he could take me and my girlfriend to see the manatee.

A few days later it was time to set off, and we set out to sea in his little fishing boat. Although a manatee is hardly small, it’s not easy to find one in a large bay. Generally a manatee or dugong spends most of its time eating seagrass. It took us a long time to find the manatee. While still on board the boat, the fisherman told us where we should snorkel to. When the manatee was in sight, he told us to dive down underwater to see it. So I tried, but didn’t succeed. I didn’t know the basic principles of the right diving technique and knew nothing about pressure equalization. My girlfriend reproachfully said, ‘Do you mean to say you can’t get down there?’ Which spurred me on to do a course in freediving on my return.

Now I travel a lot around the Red Sea. On this particular safari in the southernmost Red Sea, I’m diving with dolphins, sharks and on one dive we encountered a manatee… and this time I got down there to see it. The DAVOSA Apnea Diver was my constant companion, although I must admit I forgot the time and hardly glanced at the dial – there was simply too much going on in the sea around me.

Here you can also find a short clip to Volker Roth's encounter with the manatee: