'A great year nearing its end'
December Dive Guide column: By Dray and Karin van Beeck.
The end of 2009 is near. It was a long year but provided many special opportunities to appreciate the Red Sea. A question all dive guides are asked a lot is if we still like diving and not get bored with the same dives week in week out. My answer is: "Do you ever get bored of looking at the sunset?" It's the same sun but creates a new painting in the sky every day. Similarly the Red Sea still holds many treasures to be found and many times this year we were dazzled by her extraordinary gifts. Opening my logbook the following happened this year (mind you, all the "normal" great stuff is not even included!):
The Salem Express had a surprise for us this year with three big frogfish. Usually we spotted at least one every dive and quite often two. This added something extra to an already great wreck. They were well camouflaged and seemed to prefer hiding near the stern of the wreck. A wreck is a great place to hide if you don't want to be found. However on one occasion (the only time I forgot to mention them in the briefing) the frogfish changed to a bright yellow color instead of its normal olive green, and was clearly visible from a distance of 25 meters. Of course it discovered its mistake and changed back the next week to blend in better with the colors on the wreck!
Bottlenose Dolphins were seen almost every day at Shaab El Erg and the Barge. It's an unforgettable experience to see them cavorting around looking happy as can be. Shaab El Erg is used as a check dive site when we do the Northern itinerary. However, also the snorkelers have a good chance of seeing this great mammal. The Barge is much more quiet and many afternoons a big pod of dolphins can be seen when they pass by on the way to their sleeping grounds.
We were blessed with an abundance of oceanic white tip sharks in springtime. They were seen at the Brothers, Daedalus and St John's. Unfortunately during that period a French snorkeler was attacked and killed by one, probably because of illegal baiting going on. After the incident sightings went down drastically. Let's hope this never happens again and guides and crew on safari boats start to act more responsibly when it comes to interacting with these lively, curious sharks.
Elphinstone has always been a beautiful reef with drop-offs and stunning soft coral. Its also proved many times that it has the capacity for surprise. This year we saw thresher sharks, silvertip sharks, hammerheads, oceanics and mantas. Around the end of July the biggest surprise showed up: Tiger sharks! For the next six weeks three tiger sharks, one big pregnant female and two smaller males; were seen almost daily. They gave a few unsuspecting dive guides quite a fright the first time they were seen! After August the tigers disappeared from Elphinstone but they were seen again later in the season at Farsha Elphinstone when they came to greet some (very nervous) divers during their safety stop. Safaga also surprised when another three tiger sharks were seen there around the end of August.
I had a huge surprise of my own in July when a whale shark swam past me in 25 meters at Big Brother. It was seen many times and by many different people during the year on both Brother Islands. Also; after an absence of more than four years we finally spotted a silky shark again at Small Brother.
A new Dugong showed itself at Marsa Shouna in late spring. And&it stayed! Let's hope that it will be happy enough at Shouna to stay a long time and give us somewhere to see this gentle giant in its natural habitat. Summer and autumn were good seasons in Shouna with a loads of big leopard rays lying and flying over the sea grass. Some observant divers also found thorny seahorses and various ghostpipefishes again in Shouna.
And finally; after more than a year of searching we found soft coral pygmy seahorses. In February 2009 a new species of seahorse was named after its original discoverer; Helmut Debelius, who found the hippocampus debelius at Erg Camel in Hurghada. For more than a year though, Blue O Two guides have been seeing the seahorse at the Ulysses wreck and even saw three of them together on one occasion. These seahorses are tiny, with a maximum size of 24 mm. They are bright yellow in color and have many small spines protruding from their bodies. They seem quite active and move from coral to coral. Not much is known yet about these tiny creatures. We are still trying to find them in other locations also but no luck so far. We'll keep on looking.
All in all getting bored of diving the Red Sea&. Nah.
By Dray and Karin van Beeck. 23 December 2009