A horrifying video shows the perspective of a diving instructor as he plummeted to the bottom of an underwater sinkhole.
Yuri Lipski was a 22-year-old diving instructor from Russia and visited the Red Sea's 'Blue Hole' in Egypt on April 28, 2000.
This is a popular spot for divers, including both scuba divers and freedivers, as it is an underwater sinkhole which is located more or less immediately offshore.
The sinkhole's location makes it easily accessible, and it also has a number of interesting features to explore including an underwater archway.
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But the location has also proved to be deadly on a number of locations, even for experienced divers.
Lipski himself was no newcomer to diving, having qualified to become a diving instructor. But he ignored warnings from divers with knowledge of the site and went to dive it alone.
Among the most experienced divers of the site is Tarek Omar, a veteran diver who knows the Blue Hole intimately well.
Omar became known as 'The Elder Diver', and takes on the unenviable task of recovering the bodies of those who drown from the sinkhole.
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Among those that Omar has recovered is the body of Lipski, as well as a video camera which Omar was astonished to find still working.
Recalling the recovery dive to Cairo Scene, Omar said: "The camera should have been damaged or even broken altogether because I had found it at a depth of 115 metres, and it is only designed to sustain 75 metres; but, to my surprise, the camera was still working.
"We played it and his mother was there. I regret that his mother will have this forever."
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He added: “If I had known the footage existed I’d have flooded it. I think the thing that really upset and saddened me about it was that his mom has it now – she has the footage of her own son drowning.”
The footage itself shows Lipski's terrifying uncontrolled descent all the way to the bottom.
It starts out fairly innocuous, surrounded by blue and with other divers nearby.
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But as the video progresses the light fades, before the sickening moment that Lipski touches down on the bottom some 115 metres below the surface.
At such a depth it is likely that he would have suffered from nitrogen narcosis.
This can cause hallucinations and disorientation - bad enough at the surface but deadly deep underwater.
The discovery of the footage meant that Lipski's death became one of the most infamous diving deaths in the world.
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Kit Roberts