Egypt holiday tragedy as healthy dad died after snorkelling with wife

A man tragically died as he snorkelled with his wife in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt. Les Finch was an experienced snorkeler, an inquest heard.

The 72 year old and his wife Martha flew from Manchester Airport to Sharm-el-Sheikh on February 22 of this year. They joined a friend who had previously lived and worked in Egypt and went diving in an area known as Three Pools.

But tragedy struck on February 27 when the trio visited a large diving site interconnected by saddles of coral. Les had cut short a swim the day prior after experiencing a bout of coughing but dismissed it as a cold he had recently recovered from, The Mirror reports.

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His wife Martha, a retired district nurse, lifted her head above the water and noticed she could not see her husband and began to panic. Several other divers aided in the search for Les, and he was eventually found face down in the water.

Les was pulled out of the water as divers began CPR while they waited for an ambulance but sadly he could not be saved. An inquest held on Wednesday, April 24, at Preston Coroner's Court heard that Les died from a rare type of drowning.

His wife said: "We were swimming round and if you're looking at fish you aren't always aware of what's going on around you or above the water. My friend was already out of the water and I said 'I can't see Les'.

"She said he had swam past her just before. There were quite a few people in the water and I just couldn't see him. I really panicked. I just couldn't see him. Then someone found him. It just looked like someone snorkelling. I went to run in but a man said 'no, don't run in'."

Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers, a keen snorkeler and scuba diver himself, concluded that Les had died from immersion pulmonary oedema - a rare effect of swimming which occurs when the water pressure on a person's body ends up in the chest, causing fluid to leak from the blood vessels into the lungs.

After Les was repatriated to the UK, a CT scan carried out at the Royal Preston Hospital displayed signs of heart disease, but this was not linked to his death, nor did it cause the oedema.

Senior Coroner Dr James Adeley said that confirming Les' cause of death proved "a lot more difficult" given that he had been embalmed before being flown back to the UK. This meant analysis of the blood was no longer possible as the embalming fluid replaced the blood.

The coroner said: "He is surrounded by lots of people and no one has noticed him in distress and his mask and snorkel were still in place. He hadn't had sufficient time to raise the alarm."

Speaking to Martha, he added: "There was nothing you could have done to detect his heart disease or nothing you could have seen on holiday that suggested it was dangerous for him to get in the water."

Les’ cause of death was found to be an immersion pulmonary oedema, with high blood pressure and high cholesterol listed as contributory factors.

Despite being a highly experienced coroner, Dr Adeley said that this was the first case of drowning caused by oedema he had come across. He said: "In all other cases it's when someone has inhaled water into their lungs."

Martha described Les as a "doting granddad who was laid back and loved life". “He died doing something that he loved and it's a comfort to know he wouldn't have known anything about it," she said.