So I just got back from Egypt. Great holiday but the flight from hell complete with screaming children, flooded toilets, overweight people taking up too much room and worse of all the film being Alvin and the chipmonks..

Anyway the diving was great, manage 23 dives from shark and yolanda in ras mohamed to jackson reef up in tiran straits.

Had a few of days of bad weather (didn't know that was possible there lol). Basically strong winds from the south rather from the north made for some nice big waves and after a couple of days of low viz and people getting sea sick the local authorities closed the naama bay jetty for safty reasons. However the it soon blew itself out and we had gorgeous weather the rest of the time. There was also more plankton/ particulate in the water and even some manta sighting which is very early in the season for them.

Saw some great stuff, a few huge Jacks/ trevally, morays and Napoleons. Also green and hawksbil turtles, octopus, barracuda and some nudis.

I also saw something terrible... My fiance and I found a nice small hawksbill turtle on our house reef while doing an unguided dive there. We were following it and watching it from a respectable distance for 10 mins and started to get nervous when we saw it approach the roped snorkeling area. it was about 5m down and the snorkelers started diving down and stroking it. One free diver actually swam down and grabbed it with 2 hand. On seeing this my fiance grabbed his fins and pulled him away(I was very proud). However it was too late and the turtle was stressed. It raced to the surface leaving us unable to help and ended up caught in the ropes used to keep boats out of the area. At this point it was being mobbed by all the people that were on the surface that couldn't reach it before. Eventually it managed to free itself and dived down to 30m out of reach. Later we found out some other divers had found it and it was OK, but it had ruined a great dive. I really don't understand these people and back at the dive center we all had rants about the ignorant people around (not wanting to be racist, but mainly Russian). Some of the dive center staff were saying about some people collecting live coral and how they use to have resident dolphins until the people drove them away by harassing them.

Here are a few pics
from Naama Bay house reef, the resident Green turtles (at 25m the pics are not the best and the kicked up sand munching on the sea grass)



From the hotels house reef (Ras Ghamilia)
Xmas tree worms

Hawks bill turtle that was later molested

octopus

Snow flake eel (lead to believe this is quite rare)

Giant trevally (Jack), this was a bit of a beast and one of the biggest fish I have seen


From Shark and yolanda
Giant Moray

Crocodilefish

can you see the 2 scorpian fish?


Jackson reef
Nice big napoleon



and just a couple of nudis for good measure




rest of the pics I have uploaded are here

A lot of peoples only real knowledge of life underwater is from the old Cousteau series. Watch it again and see what him and his crew used to do.

You were unlucky with the weather. We went last March and it was fairly good all the time.

I still don't understand. There are big signs up everywhere "don't touch", "don't feed", etc.. The sort of stuff that has been drilled in to us as divers anyway, but these people don't seem to think it applies to them. I think it is even part of the local law (atleast in the national parks) just no one under water to police it.

I was there last year too and the weather wasn't bad. It was not the amount of wind though, but the direction. Usually is blows down from the north and you have the Sinai mountains giving some protection, but this year it was coming from the south bringing larger waves from the deeper red sea. The locals were saying it was very strange as it was quite humid there too which is not normal and the plankton blooms were weeks ahead of schedule. Also got some stories about the messed up weather they had in Jan with all that rain. Just hope it sorts itself out as a 1 off thing

Wookie wrote:

There are people in this world that don't like doing what they're told, when on holiday they expect everything is there for them. I have worked as a DJ (27 years) trying to entertain and you wouldn't believe peoples attitudes when they are on holiday. I once had someone tell me they were paying my wages by coming into the club I was DJ'ing in. I told them they paid to hear me play and if they don't like it they can f**k off!

I think the explanation for the odd weather might be that its an El nino year. It will effect global weather, might explain the second brief winter in the UK as well! Well i think it is! I remember reading somewhere about sea lions dying because of it! I will try and find what I read so I can say for certain!

Edit: Yeah i did remember right. Here is more information on 2009-2010 El nino

Great pictures

You have a real talent for photography.

To bad about the Hawks bill turtle, maybe we should go visit them in their house and bully them to see if they like it.

Komodo wrote:


Thank you
Still working on it and will have a strobe next time. Still need to touch up some of them in PS too though.

Did you find the 2 scorpian fish?

I can't believe you took those pictures without a strobe. You must have not been very deep.

Now I know that I must go to Egypt and scuba dive one day. From Canada, it's not cheap. I have been to Egypt once before, but I knew nothing of diving then. Next time it will be with diving as a goal.

As for your scorpion fish, are they one on top of each other in the center of the picture?

The pics were taken between 25 and 5 meters
the Green turtles was 25
Xmas tree worms and hawksbill 5-10m
Octopus 10-15m
Snow flake eel 1/2m (was off the jetty on the way out to dive, quite had to lean over and take the pic with full kit lol)
GT 5-10m, just taken from distance as it swam off as we got closer
Yolanda shots were 15-30m
Napoleon 20m
nudis were 10-20m

I'd definitely recommend red sea diving, just so much to see and the conditions are usually great.

So I assume you found the big scorpion in the middle of the pic (tail bottom left, eyes just off center). If you look up a little from the eyes of that one you will find the tail of the second with it's eyes top center looking away from camera.

couple more pics uploaded

Great pictures, I particularity liked the Bluespotted ribbontail ray.

Your photography is absolutely bloody amazing.

Thanks guys,

Booked another week back there this summer to look for manta and whalesharks. Will also give me a chance to take the strobe for a dip . So more pics will be on there way soon

If you have any photos of Mantas (especially the undersides) can you post them up please for identification