Back on the surface after 50 very enjoyable minutes on the bottom. 

One of the parts of our trip to Egypt that I was looking forward to the most was diving in the Red Sea.  I’ve always heard that the water is amazing, full of life and clear.  The visibility for each dive was at least 20 meters and the water temperature was around 82 degrees F.

Clear waters await.  The bottom that you see here is about 30ft deep.

 

Here’s the same view except that I’m looking up toward the surface.

The hotel has a dive shop on the grounds and they helped arrange four boat dives.  The boat left the dock in the morning and motored for about one hour before arriving at the dive site.  After gearing up we were lead by some very knowledgeable local guides.  Each dive lasted about 50 minutes and reached a maximum depth of around 60ft.

 

Everything is looking good down here.  This is after 30 minutes.  You can see my hands starting to turn into prunes.

A school of fish here on their way somewhere.

The neighborhood watch dog.  This morey was probably close to 6ft in length.  We saw close to 10 of these eels that day.  Seeing one on the night dive was not as much fun though.

I’m horrible at fish idetification, but I think this my be a blue spotted ray.  The name makes sense anyway.  (If anyone knows feel free to email me and let me know.  Thanks.)

I believe this is the crocodile fish.  It’s one of the most interesting fish I’ve come across.

Something I thought I’d never do was make a dive at 10 o’clock at night.  It was pitch black, I had one small flashlight and another back-up light and I was going to go 60 feet underwater.  Sounds like fun huh?  It was.  Diving at night is a completely different experience than any day dive.  There are no currents, you won’t run into any other diving groups, and the sea life is completely different.  It is a very relaxing experience.  Just be sure that you go with a very experienced guide that knows the area well.

Here’s another blue spotted ray at night.

One of the advantages of a night dive is that you’ll see the lion fish hunting.  During the day they are mostly sitting in between rocks or coral resting/sleeping.  The best sight of the night was coming across an octopus.  Because of the darkness, my slow reflexes and the octopus’ speed I wasn’t able to get a decent photo of it.