Diving Again!

So, I wasn't just ignoring my blog again after promising that I would be much more faithful about writing.  I was out of town!

Google Map view of where we were

I was in Egypt doing some dives with The Man of the Place.  We were also there to visit George who has been there since December.  He has had some time to establish himself down there with a bit of credit.

Tracy, Luke and George

 We thought we'd undermine that.

Tracy in charge of two goofs

We tried to keep the safari trip as a surprise for George but he inadvertently found out.  We took him away from his dive guide and desk duties for a week and went on the boat Emperor Asmaa.

The ship's route was the southern Red Sea near the border with Sudan.  There are exquisite corals and pristine dives to be had on this route.

Someday, I'd love to dive in the Red Sea further south in Sudan but I can't the political climate won't allow it.  I'll just have to wait here until there is peace.

Yes, we saw sharks.  We saw white tipped reef sharks, oceanic white tipped sharks, grey reef sharks, and silky sharks.  We also saw some bottlenose dolphins and loads of moray eels.

Two firsts for me were smaller, less glamorous fish.  I knew what I was seeing as soon as I saw them! I certainly wrote notes in the margins of my field guide and lots of exclamation points in my dive log.

I saw the exquisite Oranghead butterflyfish - Chaetodon lavatus

Orangehead Butterflyfish - not my photo

and the Whitehead butterflyfish - Chaetodon mesoleucos

Whitehead butterflyfish - not my photo

Both were seen toward the end of the diving holiday and I was thrilled to see them.
Another treat was this little sea slug or nudibranch, the Red Sea Nembrotha.

Red Sea Nembrotha - Nembrotha megalocera

 It was right on the sand just as I was descending on the first dive of the day.  I know this isn't very exciting to non-fish nerds so here is something exciting!
The Man of the Place and I did a dive at dusk.  The daytime fish were going to bed, the anemones were curling up and the nighttime creatures were starting their day.

The first exciting thing happened when my husband was pointing out something to me and two bottlenose dolphins swam right under him.  "Never mind about the fish, DOLPHINS!"

bottlenose dolphins

Silky shark in the distance

Literally a minute later two silky sharks swam by!  That was about the extent of our shark encounters this trip.  Sharks swam by us with no interest in us whatsoever.

Sneaky Week Away

Before the mayhem of Christmas took us over completely . . . . . .  Wait, let me go back a little bit.   In October I felt things were starting to get on top of me.  Work was non-stop and family life was in turmoil.  I tried all the normal stress relieving techniques but they weren't cutting through this particular clump of stress. My left eye started to twitch, a clear indicator for me that I was losing the battle.  I said to The Man of the Place that I was sinking.  I told him that my eye had begun to twitch and that I wasn't sleeping all that well.  I needed a bit of help.  God bless him.  He booked us a vacation.  The day after he booked the vacation, my eye stopped its annoying twitching.  Just having something to look forward to helped to lower my stress levels considerably.

He found us a bargain at the Dive Show in Birmingham.  We got a very good deal with flights, accommodation (with all our meals) and diving all wrapped up in one neat package. That was through a small travel company that specialises in dive trips, Sportif Dive Holidays.   Sadly our youngest boy couldn't join us, he had university exams to take.  So, it was just the two of us.  We haven't had a vacation alone together in . . .over twenty years!  We have always had children with us. Not having any of the boys with us was a concept that unsettled us at first.  If the kids can't go, should we just put it off until they can come along?  Nope - it was just us.  We have made one more step toward being empty-nesters.   Once I got my head around that concept, the holiday started to shine a little brighter.

We were off to Egypt for a week of non-stop diving.  Egypt has the best scuba diving within our budget.  The Red Sea offers some of the best diving there is to be had on the planet.  The turmoil that Egypt has been facing in the last year or so has not affected the diving too terribly.  There were only few divers, but that could have had something to with the fact that this was the week before Christmas.

Diving every single day of the holiday was just what the doctor ordered.  I never tire of it.  I love the sea.  When I'm not IN the sea, I can be found, looking over the edge of the harbor into the water to see what I can see.

Lemon goby

whip coral goby

I got to see my favourite fish, the Lemon goby, spotted some whip coral gobies - at about 2cm they aren't easy to see.

blue fin trevally

Indian mackerel 

Look at the blue of this blue fin trevally!  I wish the photo were in focus and framed better, but you can at least get an idea of the amazing colour of them!
This holiday was made possible because of a direct flight from Manchester to Marsa Alam airport by Thomson holidays.  This route had been cancelled for a bit and we are so thrilled that it has been reinstated.  We couldn't have gone otherwise.  The flights leave Marsa Alam back to the UK leave Egypt about 6 pm.  This means that divers can dive on the last day of the holiday and still have a good 24 hours between last dive and the flight home.

We have been diving exclusively with one company over the years, Emperor Divers.  The dive guides love the sea as much as I do and though they dive in the Red Sea for a living, they are still enthusiastic about each dive.  We could go unguided but I found that my friend Tracy, one of Emperor's instructors and guides is such a genius at spotting the things I like to see (little stuff) that I prefer to dive with her.

juvenile axilspot hogfish with giant moray

I squeezed in as many dives as daylight and the dive boats allowed.  The last dive on the last day was my 200th dive.  It was a lovely dive with a couple of  giant moray eels.  This one had a juvenile hog fish acting like a cleaner fish next to him.  I couldn't get the entire eel in the shot as it was so massive - close to 2 meters - but you can see how beautifully it was marked.   In addition to the treats we saw below the waves - Emperor Divers laid on an extra special treat in the dive boat that was used on this last day.

Emperor Elite

We were welcomed aboard the Emperor Elite, Emperor's platinum service 32 meter premier liveabord dive boat.  Holy smokes!

Man of the Place in the ship's dining room

I really tried to be cool and nonchalant about the whole experience . . . but I failed.  I was properly thrilled and snooped around the whole boat, taking photos.

I wanted to get photos of the cabins to show that there really is plenty of storage on board.  Divers seldom have a lot of personal luggage to stow anyway, but it is nice to know you have a couple of places to put your things. If you notice the table between the two single beds has a small fridge below it!  Just out of sight is a telly and the door to the bathroom.  Each room has their own.

Double cabin

This is mummy and daddy's cabin.  Loads more room!

Tracy and The Man of the Place with lovely coffee

I showed a shot of my husband walking through the dining room, but what I failed to show was the coffee and tea making facilities in the corner of the room - that had a barrista!  There was somebody there to make us really nice coffees.

dive deck

Out on the back of the boat and the dive deck, there was space enough for two zodiacs.  These essential little RIBs help the crew hook the ship up to mooring points as well as drop of and collect divers from the sea.

Ship's library

top deck of Elite

Need a place to write up your logbook in comfort? You can do that in the ship's library or if you want fresh air, try the top deck where there is a Jacuzzi!  Because we were on this ship in December, most of us opted for the comfy seats inside.  For us, it wasn't cold, but it was nicer inside.  I like the fact that if it is high summer, you can have a bit of shade on the top deck.

Me and Luke

I have declared that if my numbers ever come up on the lottery, I am making a couple of trips on this lovely ship.  One trip with my dive club and one trip with non-divers.

Territorial Fish!

Whenever a shark attacks a human it is sensational headline news.  It would make news, sharks can kill people and sometimes do.  Almost always a shark is going for somebody on the surface of the water; swimmers, snorkelers and surfers.  They rarely ever go for divers.  I guess we aren't acting like a food source.

There are some things under the sea that will attack divers, especially if divers are blundering near their nest.

Such was the case in August when we were in Egypt.  This beautiful Titan triggerfish systematically went for each and every diver in our group. The above footage was shot by a person in that dive group.  Me and my family managed to stay out of the way of the camera.  My husband and son were canny enough to move further out into the blue when the attacks started and viewed the whole scene with interest.  I was grateful that when he went for divers, including me, he kept his attention on fins.  If he had bitten any other part, we would have needed stitches.  They have hard coral biting mouths.

I have a nick out of my fin now.  I kind of like that.  It reminds me of a beautiful dive in warm water and of a very territorial fish we saw.

Little Surprise

I've been filling the days with little jobs I have been meaning to do. I've been dusting the house - even getting behind the radiators. I am appalled at the amount of dust that gets built up behind radiators.

I've also been going through the dive photos from July and identifying the little fishies in the pictures. I've been deleting the photos that are way too out of focus. I was all set to delete this out-of-focus photo of a nudibranch, the Varicose wart slug (a really unpleasant name) Phyllidia varicosa when something else in the photo caught my eye.I blew the photo up and discovered that what I had was a more in-focus photo of a Sebree's pygmy goby Eviota sebreei !!I was so delighted that I literally bounced in my chair! This is a photo of a 3 cm adult. They are actually quite common but so tiny that nobody ever notices them.

I'm not a good nature photographer, but I am keen. If you want to see the other photos, here's the link. Peggy's Photos

This photo was taken on the 14th of July at a dive site called Marsa Shouni Soroya near Port Ghalib in Egypt.

Diving Accident

The fourth day on the 23rd of December saw us diving back at the Ras Mohammed National Park. As strong currents prevented us from seeing many things on the Shark and Yolanda dive two days previously, the plan was to try this dive again. Again, the dive itself was spectacular.

We saw the biggest Napoleon wrasse I've ever seen in my life. He was a very generous 2 metres long and looked to weigh as much as a bull (in my overactive imagination). In any case, he was HUGE! Trying to distract our attention from the Napoleon wrasse were a number of Giant Moray eels. Everywhere we turned there was a moray head sticking out. In addition to that, there was a beautiful Hawksbill turtle. I got wonderful photos of all of these delights but . . . . more of that in a minute.

Toward the end of the dive, I had gone through my air a bit more quickly than Henry and George so I was buddied up with a fellow diver named Andy and we went for our safety stop and then to the surface. This left a few more minutes of "bottom time" for Henry and George.

During the safety stop Andy and I saw two masked pufferfish. They're so cute. Poisonous to eat, but adorable. I think puffers swim like clockwork fish. You can almost hear the tick tock as they go past. When Andy and I got to the surface, it was clear that the weather had changed while we were underwater. We had been under for about 50 minutes. The waves and wind had picked up. We had to swim away from the reef so that the boat would be well clear of the reef in order to pick us up. As we swam away from the protection of the reef, the waves got a lot bigger. We hadn't realized how big they had become during the dive because waves are all on the top of the water.

It took a lot of effort to swim to the boat. One of the crew threw us a rope to hang on to. Catching the rope, we could then drag ourselves hand over hand and wait our turn to board while holding on to the rope. It took me three attempts to get onto the boat. The waves were very high by this point. The ladders onto the boats are hinged at the top and it was tough to hold onto the rungs while being sloshed up and down by big waves. I got bashed about a bit but eventually made it onto the boat.

Andy came up the ladder right behind me and promptly barfed into the sea. I got my heavy diving gear off and then turned my attention to my husband and son who were still in the water. The boat was motoring over to the second pickup point and we could see Henry, George and the dive leader from the dive company, Jesus.

George was the first to come aboard, but he was having difficulties. At 14, he isn't nearly as big as the rest of us and was bobbing like a cork. There was a huge wave and the hinged ladder of the boat came down on George, pushing him under the back of the boat. He was under water for about 8 seconds, but they were the longest 8 seconds of my life. George bobbed back to the surface, but his mask had been knocked and George was clutching his face. Oh God! Jesus was in control and had George while holding the rope. While Jesus managed George, Henry was hauled on board and was promptly sick. I'll mention at this point that the waves were breaking over the back of the boat. Everything on the deck was sloshing around in warm salty water.

Jesus and the boat crew decided to get George out by hauling him up by hand in the area between the two ladders on the back of the boat. I stayed well back, heart in mouth, letting the crew and staff get on with things safely. They managed to get my boy on board with what seemed very little effort the second time. After hauling Jesus on, and checking that everybody was safely on board, the boat took off for a more sheltered area.

I went to check on George. His dive gear was now off and he was holding his mouth. The dive ladder had come down on George's mouth, knocking his breathing regulator out and his dive mask off. The ladder had also pushed his orthodontic braces up into his gums and a few of his front teeth were a bit loose. Poor lad! At least he still had all his teeth inside his head. We decided that we were DONE diving for the day. Just about everybody had seen their breakfast again. Oddly, I didn't hurl. I am one of the world's biggest barfers when it comes to being on boats when it is anything other than calm. I kept my face to the wind and my eye on the horizon and though it was close at one point, I didn't vomit.

The boat made it to a lovely sheltered and calm area where the crew could tend to the boat and even after all the violence of the waves earlier, they served up lunch! At first nobody thought they would be able to eat, but as calm was restored the seasickness went away and appetites returned.

We had the doctor that is in charge of the local hyperbaric chamber look George over. He said that it was probably best for George to wait and see his own orthodontist than to see a dentist here in Egypt. Things looked a bit twisted, but nothing that couldn't wait a few days until we got home.

If you're wondering where the pictures are, here's the thing. While I was trying to get out of the surf and onto the boat, I got bashed about quite a bit. When I was finally on board, it was brought to my attention that I didn't have my camera anymore. At first I thought they were wrong, the red lanyard was still attached to my equipment. I looked more closely and discovered that there was nothing on the other end of the strap. The camera was gone. My camera with it's non-scratched lens and expensive, weighted waterproof housing is at the bottom of the Red Sea.

I'm so glad I had just switched memory cards in the camera. The photos from the first three days of diving were safe. I only lost the pictures from that last dive. Naturally, this means that there are no more holiday photos.

Henry and I are grateful to Camel Dive Centre and their staff member Jesus and the crew of the ChicII for their professionalism.

Now we've got to battle the insurance company for some sort of compensation so that we can get the camera replaced.


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Lost Notice - If you are diving at Shark and Yolanda Reefs at Ras Mohammed National Park and see an Olympus C750 digital camera in a rigid clear plastic housing with red bits on it, it's mine and I'd like it back.

Straits of Tiran - 3rd day diving

The Straits of Tiran are at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. Egypt's Sinai peninsula is on one side of the strait and Saudi Arabia on the other side. There are only two channels through these straits that are deep enough to allow large ships. Controlling this bit of seaway controls the only sea access for the countries of Israel and Jordan. Tiran island in the center is a military base and we sport divers can't get very close to the island without risking an international incident. For those not involved in politics or shipping the Straits of Tiran mean excellent diving!!!

These four reefs are named. The reef furthest north and at the top of this photo is Jackson reef. Next along is long thin Woodhouse reef. Then there is Thomas reef, the smallest of the reefs, but the one with some of the strongest currents. Lastly is big old Gordon reef at the bottom of the photo. You can see a big rust stain across the center of Gordon reef from the wreck of the Loullia which ran aground in 1981. This is my photo of Gordon reef with the Loullia on it. You can see that the coral reef is just under the waterline, this fact combined with strong currents are why theses straits are so dangerous for ships.

Our dives on this day (the 22nd of December) were lovely. One has to be so very careful about staying within dive plans when diving on the Straits of Tiran. If you swim too far past the protection of the reef, you run the risk of getting pulled out to sea by the fierce currents that wash past these reefs. It are these currents that make Tiran such a great place to dive. Lots of lovely reef fish live on the sheltered sides of the reefs while schools of pelagic fish and the bigger fish that eat them can be found in the currents. It was just here last year that we saw two different types of dolphin, bottlenose dolphins, a family of Rizzo's dolphin and a young marlin that kept leaping out of the sea. We always keep an eye out for hammerhead sharks, but they tend to stick to the areas with strong currents.

So, into the sea . . . . . .

Blue Triggerfish - Pseudobalistes fuscus - handsome beast, isn't he? Those are little anthias Pseudanthias squamipinnis with him. They're pretty too with their orange bodies and little blue eyes.A Clearfin lionfish - Pterois radiata - not very common is this particular species. He seemed shy and had his face turned toward his hole.

Lyretailed or Zebra angelfish - Genicanthus caudovittatus- very pretty and not very common.

Another bluespotted stingray - Can you see the bright blue spot just to the right of this ray? That electric blue belongs to the Orchid dottyback - Pseudochromis fridmani - There were loads of those, but they were very small and shy so it was hard to get a photo.

This funny Freckled hawkfish - Paracirrhites forsteri - looked like he was answering the door. He was just sitting there with his head sticking out of a large soft coral. "Whadda want?"

Then there is this stunning Arabian or Yellowbar angelfish. This one was about half a metre long and so full of his own fine self. "I make this place look good!"

The Man of the Place and George skipped the third and last dive of the day on Gordon reef so I buddied up with Lars Lundquist from Denmark.This, as were all dives in Tiran, was a drift dive. A drift dive is what you plan when diving in strong currents. The boat drops you off in one place, you dive to depth (this dive was about 18 metres) and just float along on the current. When you get to the finishing point of your dive, you ascend and the boat picks you up from the finishing point at the planned time. Dive buddy Lars was diving in a 3mm shortie wetsuit and got a bit cold during this dive. When doing a drift dive, you don't move much and therefore you get cold much more quickly.
Lars with bubbles

Lars without bubbles

This dive had some wonderful gifts to show us. First there was this MASSIVE grouper - over a meter long and looked to weigh about 50+ kilos. He was very tolerant of me and allowed me to get fairly close for photographs before he went his way and we went ours.
Mister Big Grouper - Malabar grouper - Epinephelus malbaricus. He looks like I owe him money.

Then there was an eel garden. Red Sea garden eels - Gorgasia silneri - are cool. You can see them waving in the distant current but if you try to approach them, they slip back down into their holes. The only photos I got were out of focus pictures taken with what little zoom my camera had. You can see by the way the sand looks, how fast the current was in this part of the dive.
A Red Sea topshell - Tectus dentatus - sitting on a rusting tar barrel. Lots of tar barrels from the wreck of the Loullia. Nature eventually claims everything back.

Emperor angelfish - Pomacanthus imperator - Isn't this a wonderful fish?

Little bitty Shultz's or Guilded pipefish - Corythoischthys schultzi - can you make him out? Pipefish are related to seahorses. We couldn't give him a little poke to make him more visible to the camera, so if you can't see him all camoflaged there in the sand, I'm sorry. Sawtoothed feathered star - Oligometra serripinna - related to starfish Clown anemonefish - Amphiprion bicinctus - It's Nemo!! Very cute but territorial little fish.

Grey Moray - Gymnothorax griseus - We saw two of these 1 meter long eels during the day's diving. Lucky us! Just as we finished the dive, there were three cornet fish - Fistularia commersonii - just hanging out by a coral pinnacle. I like how one can see that the sun was getting low in the sky by this point.