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.