Woke up after Jon today again, before
Johanna though. Yesterday was a long day. Pancakes for breakfast and
then of to the first dive already. Zodiac trips to the reefs today
and perhaps a night dive in the evening.
Going out on the Zodiac we found two
dolphins swimming in the house reef bay. Rather unusual it seems,
especially day times when they normally sleep. We also found Yvonne
and their Safari boat out at the reef we where diving at. Another
coincident, as the Shaab Abu Dabab is a reef complex of I think up to
six reef. Said good morning and then went to dive with Salah. Fell in
from the Zodiac and proceeded to dove through a cave right at the
beginning. A long cave. I was a bit behind Jon waiting for Michael to
follow me and when I looked back to the cave I only saw a black hole
full of water. In I went and found Jon a ways in, waiting at the next
corner. Out of the cave after hitting it a few times (unfortunately),
but that seems to not be to bad, as the walls in there are coral
sediments. Should try to avoid touching anything, thought.
Outside the cave we where greeted by a
slow current going against us. Not to bad, but you do notice you are
working and using more air. Johanna found a huge puffer fish, hiding
under a coral and Salah pointed out a pyjama snail. After a while
Yvonnes safari boat jumped in, just when we where crossing it
underneath. And suddenly the water was full of divers. We had to
leave the depths shortly after that as our one hour was running out.
Proceeded back to the Zodiac and ignored some dolphins on the way
back, seen a lot of them anyway (*sniff*). Had a quick break before
Jon, Gerd, Salah and me went back in to do some exploring. As the
diving station has not been here for to long, they also don't know
where everything is. We where dropped of south of the base after a
short trip, only a few minutes and dived down to the sandy bottom at
about ten metres. Swam along the corals spotting a lot of rubbish.
Apparently about three years ago a flood had come down from the
mountain and taken a lot of rubbish in to the sea.
We found some lion fish and took a few
short detours out in to the sea grass to see if we could find the
manatee. No luck with that unfortunately, but we found something
Salah classified as a turtle road. Just a sandy stretch from the open
ocean through the sea grass to the corals. Resurfaced after a while,
me luckily not having any problems with my cavities this time.
Back to the boat and then bay to have
some late lunch and then to clean our gear.
After a short rest Johanna and me went
down to have our night dive. Time about 5.30PM, the sun goes down
very fast here. Jon wasn't joining us as he is frightened of none
existent jellyfish. After gearing up and having our briefing it was
Salah we went out with. Waded in to the shallow parts of the beach
and assembled the rest of our gear before going under. Darkness all
around us, but luckily we had torches with us. Spotted a box crab,
basically a shrimp with long hair like sticks of it's body. Also some
kind of snail moving in the water a bit away from the reef. Tiny
little thing. Saw some glowing eyes looking out from the reef,
shrimps hiding in the corals. Also a lot of sleeping fish, the
glowing plankton (only a bit, as we didn't switch our torches of) and
to the end a sea snake which was resting in about one to two metres
depth. We got a bit lost and swam a bit further than intended so we
had to walk a few minutes more. Some crabs on the beach as usual, a
bit bigger than daytimes.
After that dive Johanna and me had an
hour of rest before going to a beach party in the neighbouring hotel
complex of Abu Dabbab. Where driven there by two entertainers from
our hotel and stayed there till three in the morning before heading
back for some sleep.
A map of the local reef site here (not
very accurate), we are in the area of Marsa Ghaleb.
Diving time: 58 min. / 61 min. / 50
min.
Diving depth: 18,8m / 13,2m / 9,0m
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