Red Sea North trip - 2002
Background
Dive In, the dive shop from
The Boat - Shalkamy Explorer II
When I first saw the boat I could not believe my eyes. The boat was
absolutely huge, probably the size of 3 average Aggressor boats combined. It was freshly
painted and looked new. Rooms were comfortable, air conditioning worked and we had hot
water. Since it was only 16 of us on a boat configured for 25, most of us did not have to
share the cabin - which was good because there was no camera tables on that boat, so my
brother and I used our second beds as one.
That brings me to what was not on the boat - no photo facilities (no E-6, no camera
tables, no chargers or converters - bring your own, thankfully mine worked). We had one
camera rinse basket, and even though it was dedicated to the cameras, during the week, I
have seen items ranging from masks to knives and reels in there.
The Food
Oh my! Whatever that boat lacked in photo facilities was overly
compensated by the quantity and quality of the food; even more commendable given that it
was the end of Ramadan and the crew fasted during the day when we were consuming copious
amounts of food. Seafood every day, almost
every meal, variety - we all were complaining of the weight gain by the end of the trip
On the American Thanksgiving, they did a turkey dinner for us, a group of
English/Cypriots/Russians. OK, we did have one token American. They lit the candles (put
some candles inside the carved fruit), the cook was there in his white hat with a huge
knife in his hand, ready to carve the juicy pieces and put them on you plate with the
generous helping of staffing - it was wonderful
The Diving
My brother coming into the
swimthrough
Diving deck was huge and I could see how
it probably would not be crowded even with 25. But when it came to diving from zodiacs (or
ribs), there were only 2, and I was glad we were only 16. With half of the crowd diving
doubles and rough seas, each rib would only take 4 people. At some sites we had to wait
our turn, but the wait was never too long. And somehow, we never had to wait to be picked
up - most of times when we surfaced, the zodiac would be right there.
All night and twilight dives were done directly from the boat at your own leisure - you
could do as many night dives as you wanted. Since we generally pushed the limits during
the day, we would only do one hour-long dive every night
Restrictions - they were none as long as you dove within the limits of your training and,
more importantly, comfort. We did a few deco dives but tried to limit our deco obligations
to less than 10 min total - most of the times during wall dive, when we would be spending
the best part of the dive drifting at 20-30 ft and off-gassing.
Wreck diving dominated reef diving (no complains from me ;-)). All in all, we visited
close to 10 different wrecks in 10 days - my brother and I got to dive on most of them. As
I did in my previous reports, I would only describe the sites that remained in the memory
for longer than the day we visited them - for good or bad reasons
Siyal El Kaver
The boat departed Hurgada on Saturday and we did 3 dives that day. This site
was home to our dives #2 and #3 of the first day or dusk and night dives. It is within
easy reach of day boats, so it is quite over-dived and has lots of dead coral. It will
remain in memory as the site where I saw my first ever Spanish Dancer nudibranch - 4 of
them actually, for the first time. When I first sighted one, I almost lost my regulator -
I have only seen them in the Marine ID books before and thought they would be small - I
never looked at the size section that said they grow to 50 cm (19 inches)!!! And I might
have found the largest one, it was huge - I was very happy I had 15MM lens on my Nikonos V
had I have my macro on, it would not have fit in the framer (as a result, I spent all my
subsequent macro dives with 1:3 instead of 1:2 - was hoping to see more Dancers)
Once I made about 5 shots of the first one, saw the second one close behind and another 2
by the end of the dive. That was it - I could go home happy
The Shaab Abu Nuhas Wrecks
There are at least four wrecks there next to each other within the rec depth limits - I
understand that there are others as well in deeper waters. We have done (chronologically) Giannis D, Carnatic, and the Chrisoula K (aka Tile Wreck). Each dive was wonderful in its own
right. Carnatic is 100 yrs older than the other two wrecks and more beat
up, so you could swim pretty much through it - which we did - parallel to each other and I
snapped few shots of my brother
On each of the wrecks I did silhouette shots that I use a lot in the lakes - the Giannis pics turned out quite well
The Tile wreck (so called because it was
transporting the tiles) lies with its bow stuck in the reef almost at the surface and the
stern at about 80 ft - there was quite a strong surge when we dove it and I had an
experience of being sucked into the room while swimming next to the door and my brother
had a reverse experience with being spat out of the room into the corridor - neither of us
liked those experiences too much and we decided not to go inside anywhere else on this
one. Below is the prop of the Tile wreck
Dunraven
This wreck is in most guide books. It is quite old, upside down and swimmable through. Of
interest is a huge boiler inside, 2 resident Napoleon Wrasse and the prop outside
Funny story on this one - we were supposed to dive Dunraven and then drift back to the
boat along the reef wall - except the current was going in the other direction, so we did
a drift dive against the current - most work I did of all dives. That was the moment when
I decided to give up my split fins;-))
Ras Mohammed Wall
This was one of those WOW dives when you
are experience a total sensory overload from the amount of color, movement and the
variety. Having dropped briefly to 150ft, we spent most of the dive at 30 ft - I don't
experience this feeling often, but I did not want to leave even when the film ended
(normally, the end of the film means the end of the dive as well)
Shark and Yolanda Reef (Wall dive)
We dove that one twice and went deep on the first dive looking for .. the sharks of course
(saw none). I noticed how pretty the 40 ft and above area was as we were coming up. So,
when after some surface time we decided that single tank divers will dive the same area
again, I was in the water very fast - we stayed at 50ft initially coming up to 30 ft in
the second half of the dive. Another WOW dive - I could not believe how healthy and
plentiful the coral was, how many variations of colors of soft coral they were, and the
diversity of fishes surrounding us. The current pushed us gently along the wall and we
just drifted in total relaxation fascinated by the marine life happening around us. After
about 70 min it as time to come up and we did, very reluctantly
Thistlegorm
When I finally got down to the deck, I could see what was all the hype about
this wreck, but I think this wreck is being ruined by the volume of divers that it gets.
When we got there at about 4pm, there was about 7 other boats moored on it already - all
stayed overnight
Unless you are willing to forgo the best light conditions and dive at the weird hours, be
prepared to share this wreck with hundreds of other divers - and when I say hundreds, I am
not kidding.
In total we made 4 dives on this wreck.
Our first was just exploratory, we did not go inside, did not spend much time at one spot,
just swam around, saw the features we would like to see in greater detail later and made
decisions on if we were going to penetrate
Second was a night dive - I had my macro set up - was not much macro there -it is so over
dived, there is not much life left. We did managed to find a nice scorpion fish and few
lion fishes. It was night (about
Our dive #3 started at 5:30am the next day as we knew that a lot of divers from other
resident boats would be in the water by 6am, so this was our only chance to go inside and
be there by ourselves with some daylight already available. And that was what we did. Had
fun swimming through the holds looking at all the items there. Just as we were finishing
up in the 3rd hold, the hordes arrived, so we did few ambient light shots of the wreck and
went to the line.
After about an hour surface interval, we went down again - boy, was that thing ever
crowded! We just swam to the stern (the damaged part) to make pics of the guns and there
was a friendly school of barracudas and another school
Bluff point Barge
It is amazing how this very boring-looking site (old broken down barge)
turned out to be my best macro dive ever! The barge is rusted and almost flat, but due to
the fact that it is in the calm waters, it makes a perfect night dive.
We were the first boat to arrive at the site and other boats that arrived later moored
nearby and put the lines between the boats and the site. As we were still offgassing from
previous dives, we did not get in the water immediately. At about 7pm at night, we were
ready to go, but after one look down at the site (it was right under the port side of our
boat) decided to postpone it for an hour - the site was overcrowded with people some of
whom had HID lights
At about 8pm, we finally got in the water and made our way to the site. Immediately I
thought that it looked promising. There was a lot of ruble around and I was hoping we
would see some shrimps and other mini critters. Once we made it to the wreck, we saw
couple of lion fishes right away. Spent some frames on those, then saw more and more and
more - by the end of the dive I just ignored them
As I really wanted to get a picture of banded shrimp, I started swimming inside the hull
looking into every hole and under every ledge. Soon enough, I did find a small shrimp
sitting on the face of the moray eel. That was quite a view, but he refused to pose for
the camera
I noted where the hole was and figured I would come back and see is he would be more
cooperative later. Moving towards one end (could not say where stern and bow were), saw
some anemones and red colored sea urchins. Then one of the holes in the hull yielded a
very cute blue baby eel - after than one I saw at least three more
We then saw some people for our group trying to attract our attention. They found a very
large crab. It was sitting in the crease, completely out of range for my framer, so I
could only look
I then decided to go outside of the hull and search the rubble - as soon as I looked under
on of the metal plates I saw the eyes! Shrimp! Was very cooperative one as well - posed
for the camera. After that I saw at least ten more shrimp. Later. my brother suddenly
flashed the light at me and, as I moved closer, I could see his frustration He had a very
small macro framer and found a very big scorpion fish.
I was running low on film and was not
going to get out of the water anytime soon, so I only made one shot. I went back in the
direction of the hull keeping low to the ground and looking for more mini critters when I
almost came nose to nose with another scorpion fish. Both of those are in my
Back to the hull to look for other things when
some movement caught my eye. I cold not believe my senses for a moment - there was a piece
of coral that moved! Then I saw the eyes..turns out it was a very cute hermit crab with
corals growing on his shell. Another first for me. Snapped one picture than went and got
my brother as the little hermit was perfect for his frame. This is the one
He snapped the pics and signaled 'out of film' and 'I am cold but don not want to come
up". We stayed for another 10 min to finish my roll and very reluctantly came back
up. Computers registered 80 min. Decided against another dive as were both quite cold (and
that was dive #5 of the day)
The Non-Diving Part
We decided to stay in Cairo for 2 days after the trip and that was a wonderful decision.
From my previous visits to the Pyramids, when we would only pass through Cairo on the
tourist bus, I had an impression of Cairo as very poor, unsafe and rather dirty city.
Later, having spent two days living in the middle of it, this impression disappeared.
We stayed at the hotel in Zamalek area, very leafy and bustling with shops and
restaurants. Zamalek is an island in the middle on Nile right across from the downtown
core. We walked around a lot, took a long stroll along the Nile, spent 3 hours on top of
Cairo tower watching the city during the daylight, dusk and seeing the lights come out
below after sunset. The next day was spent on a private tour when we had the minivan with
the driver to ourselves to take us where we wanted. In my opinion it was the best way to
see the sites and avoid the crowds.