Diving the Red Sea

We look to the stars at night and try to understand our universe, but we forget that our earth is seven tenths water and this undersea alien environment we have hardly scratched the surface. I have spent many weekends and holidays travelling and diving around some of the wonderful locations around the world.

Some of the places that I have dived are so rich with diverse life and stunning creatures unique to their environment. On a recent trip to Egypt's Sharm El Sheikh where there is some of the best diving in the world to be done. I had a small amount of trouble being mistaken as a terrorist but managed with the aid of the British Consulate to overcome this problem.

I had come to Dive Ras Mohamed which has National Park status here we did a number of Drift Dives and had a bit of a Scare around Jackson Reef with there are known to be Tiger Sharks in the area.

Tiger Sharks are known for being the second most dangerous of the shark species to man. They tend to have the desire to eat anything and having read about some of the stomach contents of Tiger Sharks caught that have included diverse items such as number plates and body parts.

The Tiger shark is named for the stripes than can be seen along the side of the streamline body. They have an incredible amount of sophisticated senses located along their Ampullae of Lorenzini which has the ability of detecting small amounts of electricity that are given off by potential dinner whether this is a turtle in distress there normal source of food or the more unusual signals given off by a diver.

During a period a lot of Dive boats where grouped together an unfortunate incident occurred a number of divers where trying to play with a large sea turtle. The turtle was clearly distressed by the unwanted attention of some irresponsible divers. By distressing the turtle in this way it was giving a clear signal through the water of being distressed.

A tiger shark had picked up these signals and had starting to home in on this turtle and the divers where suddenly confronted by a reasonably sized Tiger shark that attacked the turtle and bit a large amount of it.

The divers all panicked and managed to get pulled out of the water but they had caused a sea creature to perish by stupidity. The rest of the diving trips did not produce any close encounters with sharks. When diving off towards the reef shelf you can sometime see larger sharks white tips and others.

Other interesting spots to dive in the Red Sea area are the Thistlegorm a vessel that was sunk by a dive-bomber and has now become one of the most famous wrecks in diving. This is due to the cargo that is still viewable in the holds.

Also it was carrying two steam locomotives I managed to spend sometime looking at one of the locomotives that had landed upright on the sea bed absolutely a must to see if you on a dive holiday.

Also fun is to see another wreck, which had a large amount of Plumbing, and bathroom equipment on board it is an odd site seeing a bath on the sea floor. As a professional diver it's always good to use the best available dive boats and crews. I have found that the red sea diving college to be the best available in the area.

So if you are considering a diving excursion in the red Sea go and see them and explore some of the best reefs and wrecks available in the world.