divebunnie

Well another week, another course!
I had been hoping to be diving on the reef on Earth Day this year, so that at the very least, I would be able to do a little litter collecting. But I was in the pool teaching. Malesh, as they say here in Egypt (never mind). I got my chance on our first open water dive, as this took place on Naama Beach where sadly litter gets blown into the sea from the beach. It is so sad to be taking students out on their first open water experience, only to find the sand and reef dotted with plastic cups, beer cans, newspaper, plastic bags, all sorts of junk. So, as usual I came up with a fair amount of stuff filling my pockets.

On the temperature front, we are enjoying a real taste of summer with temperatures rocketing up into the high 30’s even hitting 40+ around midday. It truly feels more like late June than April. But while we are melting on the surface, the sea knows better and is still stuck firmly at 23ºC hmph. So after about 30mins in the water, I am freezing my socks off (it’s too hot on the surface for my drysuit on local sites for sure).
Along with the warm weather, and despite the lack of change in sea temp. we are getting a huge amount of big stuff passing by. Regular shark sightings in the Tiran area, and Ras Mohammed too.

I had an awesome dive on Ras Za’atar last week! It was our last dive of the day, most other boats had headed for other sites, so we thought we would jump on Za’atar. Usually this is a site I prefer in the morning as the afternoon can be a bit shady (especially in winter) but you do get some cool visual effects as the sun casts beams of light down into the blue, through folding chinks in the reef plate. Well we had turned the corner, so as far as I was concerned, missed our chance of anything big, when along sidles a rather lovely grey reef shark! Hmmm very graceful and nice n leisurely. What a great end to the dive, day and for my guests, week.

I had begun to think that the entire BunnieBlog had been lost to the hackers that had trashed The Deepstop. Thanks to the guys on board, they got it all back up and running again, with no loss of our diary.

So what has been happening in Sharm for the last few days??
I guess the main thing is the heat! Summer seems to have arrived early with temperatures already in the high thirties. Although the water seems to be taking its time to follow suit. I guess it won’t be long before shorties are the order of the day and we are all basking in the glorious bath that is the Red Sea. Hmmmm

In the meantime, I am confined to the swimming pool, as I am starting a new course this week. No sharks to be found there sadly, but there seem to be plenty abounding elsewhere at the moment. Even local divers are encountering regular manta ray sightings and the other day, Janna spotted a whale shark in the Gardens area!!

So today we were in Ras Mohammed and I had a great dive on Jack Fish Alley.
This poor site does sometimes get a bad rap. I love the little swim throughs, I love the coral pinnacles and the satellite reef. Or maybe because it is not one of the really really popular sites, it has had a chance to flourish a bit, but today it was glorious! The current was reversed, which I always like because that way you get the alley and satellite reef first, and it was quite strong, so it turned out to be a great drift dive.
We started off by seeing a couple of crocodile fish, followed by a turtle, an eagle ray, the usual blue spotted rays, which was all great. But the really good bit was that the blue scale emperor shoal is back in town! These guys don’t normally turn up in their hordes until late April, but here they were in a nice big gang milling around the coral garden. Once the emperor fish start gathering, that is the sure sign that the sharks will be back soon. Wooo hoo!
In general, probably because of the current, the reef was heaving with fish, a great last dive for our little group. Even though the surface conditions had been a bit on the lumpy side. We could still feel the swell at 16m which wasn’t really ideal.

So we are back in the pool this week with a new course. So we have tiles and the odd plaster to look at for the next couple of days. Hehe.
At least it is nice and warm, a balmy 28′C in the water. And we don’t have to deal with the waves, that are for sure hitting the beach, with this wind (it is a bit blowy today).
All fun n games eh.