We made it to the Red Sea and since we were there we couldn’t skip the chance to dive.
There were many of these mounds around but we forgot to ask what they might be.
There are power cables that run from Egypt to Jordan because Jordan buys power.
It is quite the setup underneath the water.
Even though we didn’t get that far into the sea and were mainly still in the gulf it was quite pretty.
There were quite a few similar looking fish and corals.
There were a few more sponges then we’d seen before.
The orange fish are back though.
This guy wasn’t blending in all too well.
If he moved back a bit into the rocks it may have been a better hiding spot.
This is a remora and our divemaster for this dive.
We had never seen them before swimming free.
It kept trying to attach to the tank and then swam all around our dive master looking for a spot to attach. It never did, but followed us for over 10 minutes.
Kerri pointed out a turtle heading right towards up.
It may have seen its reflection in the lens which is why it swam directly at me. I tried not to move too much to disturb it.
In retrospect I have no idea why I didn’t hold down the shutter because it was super cool how close it got. I just froze because I was trying to keep out of its way as it almost swam right into me.
If the mounds were next to funnel shaped pits then it is a large worm that gobbles up sand at the bottom of the pit and poops it out at the top of the mount in a vulcano like manner.
The orange fish are female lyretail anthias. They form harems with one more purple male per 5-10 females. There is one male in each image.
The poorly camouflaged fish is a starry puffer. Pufferfish are not very worried about preditors because they are very toxic. The Japanese takifugu delicacy is a pufferfish that requires great care in prepartion to remove the toxic organs.
The remora is a young one. It would probably be more happy to attach itself to a turtle than a diver. I bet the turtle was really used to seeing divers, possibly including some that feed them, because they don’t normally don’t come towards you.
Hope/expect to be in the Red Sea myself in May next year.
I completed my dive certification in the Red Sea in 1989 when I was working in Saudi Arabia! Very cool you guys!