During the night of 6 November 2024, fire broke out aboard the MV Nouran at Daedalus Reef in the southern Red Sea. The crew fought the blaze but could not contain it. Every guest and crew member was evacuated without injury, transferred to a nearby liveaboard, and returned to Port Ghalib. The Nouran burned and sank at the reef. It was the fourth Egyptian Red Sea liveaboard lost in 2024, and nineteen days later the Sea Story capsized in the same stretch of sea with the loss of eleven lives.
What happened
The Nouran was part-way through a southern Red Sea itinerary when the fire started. Daedalus is a remote offshore reef, roughly 80 kilometres from shore, which makes any emergency there a self-rescue situation in its first hours. The decisive factor was that help was already on site. MV Tala, a technical diving liveaboard from the same fleet, was close enough to take everyone aboard. The transfer was completed without injuries, and all guests and crew were brought back to Port Ghalib.
Red Sea Explorers, the Hurghada-based operator that owned the Nouran, issued a statement the following day. The company confirmed that despite the swift and professional efforts of the crew, the fire could not be contained, and the vessel was lost. The statement described the boat in personal terms: not just a vessel, she was a home. No cause was given at the time, and no investigation findings have been published since.
The vessel
The Nouran was a 36-metre liveaboard with a mahogany hull, twelve cabins and capacity for 24 divers. Her itineraries covered the marquee sites of the southern Red Sea: the Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone, Rocky Island and Zabargad. Wooden construction is standard across much of the Egyptian liveaboard fleet, and it carries a known trade-off. Wood burns. Once a fire takes hold on a wooden boat at a remote reef, the realistic objective shifts from saving the vessel to getting everyone off it. On the Nouran, that second objective was met in full.
The pattern of 2024
The Nouran was not an isolated event. February 2024 took the Sea Legend in a fire that left one diver presumed dead. June took the Exocet in a collision. October took the Seaduction in a storm. November took the Nouran, and then the Sea Story. Five liveaboards lost in a single year, capped by the deadliest Red Sea liveaboard disaster in recent memory. That sequence is what prompted the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch to issue its formal safety bulletin in February 2025, citing sixteen accidents involving Egyptian liveaboards in the preceding five years.
“The Nouran is the incident the industry should study, because it shows the difference a nearby vessel and a drilled crew make. The same month shows what happens without them.”
– Red Sea Log EditorialWhat we still don't know
The cause of the fire has never been published. No official investigation findings have been released. Fires on liveaboards typically trace back to engine rooms, electrical systems or charging stations, but in the Nouran's case there is no confirmed account, and the Atlas will not speculate beyond that. What the record does show, across the Hurricane in 2023, the Sea Legend in February 2024, the Nouran in November 2024 and the Seven Seas in March 2025, is that fire is the most recurrent way Red Sea liveaboards are lost, and that how early a fire is detected decides how the story ends.
MV Nouran is part of the permanent incident record maintained by the Atlas. The evacuation was clean: a nearby fleet vessel, an orderly transfer, every person accounted for. The crew did their job well. The open question is the cause, which has never been published, and the Atlas will update this record if findings are released. If you were on board or have direct information about this incident, use the comment section below.
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