A week on a Blue O Two liveaboard out of Hurghada on the northern wrecks and reefs, with a run out to the Brothers. It was also the first proper trip with the Canon G9 X Mark II, in a Fantasea housing with an INON S2000 strobe, after a couple of years with the little SeaLife.
The first day eased in with a stingray gliding over the sand and divers over a big red sea fan. On the night dive there was a Spanish dancer and a parrotfish asleep in its mucus bubble.
Then came the wrecks. The Giannis D on Abu Nuhas lies over on her side, so her interiors are all tilted and lit through the openings, and her engine room still has its cylinder heads in line. Elsewhere there was a broken bow, and portholes framed by soft corals. A pyjama nudibranch was out on the steel. At Shark and Yolanda Reef in Ras Mohammed, a Napoleon wrasse cruised the wall, which was thick with anthias. Below it lay part of the Yolanda’s cargo: a toilet on the seabed, long since claimed by fire coral.
The sharks came at the Brothers. On the plateau at Little Brother, in the gloom of a dawn dive, a thresher shark swept past. It was my first thresher and it’s still a favourite. The next day an oceanic whitetip cruised around us in the blue with pilot fish in tow, and passed behind a diver on the way up. The last morning was easy reef diving with a boxfish, Christmas tree worms, bigeyes, a triggerfish and an anemonefish in its bubble-tip anemone.
There’s no dive log for this trip.
