The atmosphere inside the H2O Divers scuba diving center in Sinai’s Dahab was bustling with anticipation on Wednesday morning; in less than 24 hours, Egyptian diver Ahmed Gabr will attempt to plunge 350 meters below the surface – deeper than any other human in history.

Members of the team supporting Gabr filled the center, shifting in their seats or scrambling about as they undertook the final preparations for the dive: checking equipment, transporting it and loading it on the boats where the teams will operate from, going over the dive plan and other event-related logistics.

Leo Morales, the Mexican record holder for deep diving with a disability and Omar Samra, the first Egyptian to reach the peak of Mount Everest, have come down to support Gabr.

Gabr’s aim – 350 meters – is over 30 meters deeper than the official record holder for deepest saltwater scuba dive, Nuno Gomez, who descended to 318.25 meters in 2005, also in Dahab.

The first boat will leave in the early hours of Thursday, at 3:15am. It will reach the destination on the southern coast of Dahab around 650 meters deep. Here, Gabr will hold onto a line as he descends into the sea.

A tag will be tied to the line at 350 meters which Gabr will have to retrieve to prove he reached his goal. The rope dropping will be handled by a Guinness Book of World Records judge.

The second boat, carrying Gabr, will catch up with the first which will be anchored in position. He is set to begin his dive at 8am according to plan.

Gabr decided to embark on his record attempt 4 years ago. The dive, which will take over 14 hours to conduct, was planned over the span of two years and has undergone several modifications over the past 6 months, wherein several training dives were staged by Gabr and the world record team.

Despite the lengthy chore to the bottom, Gabr will in fact reach 350 meters in a short while, around 15 minutes. It’s the ascent that’s tricky, taking over a dozen hours to allow for gases potentially harmful for him to depressurise and leave his body.

Under pressure, some of the gases Gabr will be breathing, such as oxygen and nitrogen, have toxic effects at high pressures and could be fatal if inhaled, this is why so much planning and training has gone into his attempt.

“No one knows what such a depth will do to a diver’s body, that’s the reason Ahmed is going in the first place, to explore,” Catherine Wilson, one of the press officers of the dive world record event told Ahram Online.

The whole fourteen hours will be a challenge, she said, emphasising that an enormous amount of work, from a large team of unpaid divers spanning different nationalities and experiences, went into it.

For the majority of the distance to the bottom, Gabr will be completely alone. Gabr’s support divers will all be hovering at and above 120 meters. The first support diver, Jaime Browne, will ascend slowly with Gabr to the depth of 90 meters and hand him over to another support diver who will then hand him over to another at 60 meters, and so on.

The support divers must do their own decompression stops after supporting Gabr.

A day before the dive, Gabr didn’t make a public appearance – a press conference by the record attempt team was cancelled shortly before it took place.

The 38 year old retired army officer and father could however be seen walking up Dahab’s main promenade, looking relaxed and focused.

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