| EGYPT Diving in the Red Sea My Log Book |
| 04/09/02 Wednesday First dive: Thistlegorm, Sha'ab Ali The world-famous Thistlegorm wreck indeed deserves its name. It's so massive that Dunraven is nothing in comparison. Even I, as a non-wreck fan, got excited at the sight of it. And there was so much fish life around it. Anything to do with all the boats above? - 7 liveaboards and 2 day boats! You see streams of bubbles the minute you get in the water. Fortunately, Alex and I were on our own most of the time as we didn't go inside. Fish here generally swam around in groups, and at one gap thousands of small fish (glassfish) formed a cloud. Schools of bannerfish, batfish, marbled grouper, one blue triggerfish, a cornet fish, barracuda, etc.etc. Second dive: Thistlegorm, Sha'ab Ali Another dive at Thistlegorm, of course. Everybody was eager to jump back into the water. But the current was stronger and visibility was significantly worse, couldn't see the locomotive nearby. The first big fish we encountered was a shark-like one, but Alex couldn't remember the name. The blue triggerfish was still there as well as the clouds of glassfish. Several lion fish were close to a few marbled groupers, one of them resting on a piece of the wreck. Also saw a female cube boxfish. The wreck is covered with algae, with some starfish resting on top. As to the wreck, two huge tyres, a 8-step ladder, some cannon-like pipes, and coils of ropes. Third dive: Lonely Mushroom This is my first dive this week without Alex. My buddy was Tony, and we teamed up with Gill and Denise. It was a relaxing dive, so my concentration was completely on photography. Visibility was not great and there was some current. Saw my first long-nose unicornfish, another blue triggerfish, Alex' favourite hawkfish, schools of black-spotted sweetlips, bannerfish, a masked puffer, lionfish, parrot fish, anemone fish, masked butterflyfish. Also saw an Indian tubeworm, very pretty, an orange-striped triggerfish with dark green in between, most beautiful design of colour, and more black-barred surgeonfish. 05/09/02 Thursday First dive: Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, Ras Mohamed We jumped off the drop-off of the Shark Reef, which goes all the way down to the deep, deep sea. There was no current, so we were able to swim around it twice before continuing to the adjacent Yolanda Reef. Saw two moray eels, both hiding in holes, the first one sticking out more than the second. A school of blue-bar trevallies were hanging around the sandy patch between the two reefs, some with two black spots on both sides. A Napoleon was swimming below us. Before long many more divers joined us with massive show of bubbles, two diving at 60m! Through the dive Alex thought she could hear dolphins, but nobody was able to spot any. Second dive: Anemone City, Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, Ras Mohamed We went to Anemone City first until we reached some table corals. Then we turned back towards Shark Reef again. And a turtle swam right into us on its way to surface. It was beautiful. The school of trevallies were still there. And I finally saw the Arabian angelfish with the yellow mark on its belly, and the most beautiful orange-spine unicornfish with two bright orange yellow bony plates on the caudal peduacle. A moray eel stuck its head out of the hole, trying and feeling, then swam out completely against the bottom, curiously observing us. And all the little red jewel fairy basslets, lovely against the light. Third dive: Ras Gazlani This was a very good dive. It was my first drift dive, although I didn't realise there was a current after a while. We drift with our faces towards the reef, just like some of the fish. Fan corals, table corals were all along the way. A group of long-nose unicornfish marked the beginning of the dive, several pairs of black-fin dart gobies with their black skirts were near the bottom, and two pairs of huge batfish were sheltering behind the corals. Towards the end, someone spotted a baby turtle. Disturbed, it started to swim away, into a little valley, climbed up the coral, swam to another, then again swam. We just followed, admiring our baby turtle. It's got a protruding point on the shell. Fourth dive: Ras Caty Second night dive this week, at the same as the first site. It was very peaceful, although with flashlight, I often fancy it gets higher in front and tend to want to swim higher. A blue-spotted stingray was disturbed at the bottom. Two sea snakes slowly swam away. Lots of black sea urchins dotted here and there, and we also saw two bright red-coloured toxic leather sea urchin. Another very red creature was a zebra dwarf lionfish. Two common lionfish followed our torch all the way back to the boat. And under the spotlight in the shallow water was a cute giant puffer. Previous Page Egypt Main Page Next Page |
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