Red Sea Digital Underwater Photo Expedition 2006 Trip Journal

What we dived today:
14: Dive#1 Gordon Reef – The Barrels
15: Dive#2 Gordon Reef – Outside south
16: Dive#3 Crossing Jackson to Woodhouse
17: Night# Gordon Reef

It is getting better everyday and a pity that we already have half of this year’s Red Sea expedition behind us. We are currently the only boat in Tiran and will try to use this advantage to find some sleeping sharks and rays. So we slipped silently into the water from our moored boat and started our exploration onto the Gordon Plateau. Unfortunately Tiran’s topside and the plateau on 30 metres did have something in common. Both did not have much traffic in the early hours of the morning. We continued the dive and after kicking my fins in boredom I found a huge Red Whip Coral to be worthy enough of some photo composition practise. Shortly after that the sandy ledge with the barrels (dropped long ago by the wreck) started. And among one of these we finally found a huge sleeping stingray. That made our safety-stop worthwhile before the zodiac came to pick us up. The stingrays shark friends must have slept below.

Since yesterday night the sea was suddenly flat and had calmed a little bit after the usual morning wind. This allowed us to try something which is rarely possible in Tiran. We took the boat closer to the south Corner of Gordon Reef and jumped to head around the corner of the new lighthouse. This part of Gordon Reef features a very strange sandy plateau that has a very steep sloop with some coral heads facing straight upwards. It is very easy to isolate subjects here and practise good photos. Also it offers you to perfectly approach blue spotted stingrays which cannot withstand the sandy bottom.

The sandy area continues around the corner were you would usually expect more current to sweep it away. On our dive we were lucky to have almost no current. We were able to take our time and inspect the local reefscape which I found to be very healthy. As we went on to the north I suddenly lifted up my head and was able to capture a huge school of Thunas passing above our head. Sylvie was quick enough to follow them for a while to the south and made them the theme image of the day (see above). The dive ended with a teenager Napoleon accompanying our group and allowing me to get in photo range after a steady 3 minute fin work.

I regretted that I left the photo camera and took a not fully charged video system instead. The unusual dive revealed great light which I did not expect at that depth. We did a very speedy drift from the south of Jackson to the north of Woodhouse. Contrary to what you may assume this dive is not straight through the blue. You do it along a very nice *and rich* Reef that is visible underneath you. A group of divers has to be very skilled and the current has to be just right to reach the north of Woodhouse Reef. It was a great experience and the dive ended without any current in a sandy area of Woodhouse, where we met our first turtle on this trip. I got a few seconds on HDV before batteries exhausted.

This night the Sea was even calmer and the fusiliers returned under our boat. Some fishermen came close to our boat and I had a god play with the Fisheye lens on my Canon EOS 5D in the sunset. Enjoy the photos of the day. A yes, guess who skipped the night dive and who didn’t  …