Dive sites (Red Sea): Poseidon’s Garden (Sha’ab El Erg)

Off the back of the liveaboard at Poseidon's Garden
Off the back of the liveaboard at Poseidon’s Garden

The first dive of our Red Sea trip was a “check dive” at a horseshoe shaped fringing reef called Sha’ab El Erg. The part of the reef that we dived on was called Poseidon’s Garden, and featured a large piece of reef, some smaller pinnacles, and a very fetching coral garden that stretched out from the edge of the reef. The purpose of the dive, which was done on air, was to sort out our buoyancy in the warm, very salty water of the Red Sea. I was wearing my Trilastic 8-6-5 (overkill, I know, but I don’t have a thinner wetsuit!) and had to add weight.

Tony, Kate and Christo fifteen metres below me
Tony, Kate and Christo fifteen metres below me

The reef is north of Hurghada and its shape makes it an extremely sheltered environment for a first dive off a liveaboard.

Coral at Poseidon's Garden
Coral at Poseidon’s Garden

Dive date: 19 October 2013

Air temperature: 26 degrees

Water temperature:  26 degrees

Maximum depth: 14.8 metres

Visibility: 30 metres

Dive duration:  46 minutes

Anemone fish at Poseidon's Garden
Anemone fish at Poseidon’s Garden

Bookshelf: Red Sea Diver’s Guide, Volume 2: From Sharm el Sheikh to Hurghada

Red Sea Diver’s Guide, Volume 2: From Sharm el Sheikh to Hurghada – Shlomo & Roni Cohen

Red Sea Diver's Guide, Volume 2: From Sharm el Sheikh to Hurghada
Red Sea Diver’s Guide, Volume 2: From Sharm el Sheikh to Hurghada

We’re off to the Red Sea in October, and on the advice of Ned Middleton, author of Shipwrecks from the Egyptian Red Sea, I got hold of this book (which was in itself quite a performance), as he rates it very highly among the proliferation of guidebooks about the area. I did a lot of searching on my own before capitulating and following Middleton’s advice, and was unimpressed by the number of books with lightweight overviews of the dive sites, pictures that were sourced from stock photo banks, and authors who haven’t even dived the areas in question.

If you plan to get hold of this book, Middleton’s review on Amazon.com highlights the errors it contains (some shipwrecks are named incorrectly, for example), which is important if you plan to dive the area. If you plan to dive the Red Sea and are looking for a reference book, this list contains some books to avoid, and this one lists some reputable guides.

The Cohens’ book was published in 1994, and at that stage, having dived in the Egyptian Red Sea for years, they could already observe deterioration in the reefs and a decline in the number of sharks and large fish. The nature of most dive sites, however, is such that their topography usually does not change appreciably with time, particularly in relatively sheltered waters. The book includes a number of maps, some of which are clever combinations of aerial photographs and semi-transparent overlays marking the pertinent landmarks and routes.

Both boat and shore dives are featured here, and with respect to the shore dives the Cohens’ layout and style reminded me very much of the excellent book we used when we visited Malta in 2011: Scuba Diving Malta – Gozo – Comino. There is enough information for a shore diver to be fairly self sufficient, although I would check the locations of hyperbaric chambers, filling stations, dive centres and other amenities as they may have changed (and increased in number) in the last 20 years. Live aboard diving was in its infancy in 1994, but was growing in popularity and the Cohens refer to it more than once in this volume.

Towards the back of the book there is a fish identification guide, which could be handy if you don’t have space to pack an additional fish ID book in your luggage. The book also came with a separate fold-out map of the northern Red Sea area.

You can get the book (probably) here. If you do look elsewhere for it, make sure you’re getting an English edition, as the German edition is much easier to find and looks practically identical. Caveat emptor!

Durban dive sites

Craig, Maurice, Tony and Christo safety stopping above the Fontao wreck
Craig, Maurice, Tony and Christo safety stopping above the Fontao wreck

Here’s a round up of the sites we dived on our trip to Durban in June 2013, and on prior trips up north:

Durban diving involves a surf launch from the beach near the harbour entrance, and a characteristically long boat ride, usually of at least 25 minutes. It’s essential to carry an SMB. We dived with Calypso and highly recommend them.

There are some nice Durban dive site summaries here, here and here.

Dive sites (Durban): Blood Reef (Doug’s Cave to Birthday Ledges)

Descending near Doug's Cave
Descending near Doug’s Cave

For our last dive we enjoyed lovely drift dive in the fashion of Sodwana. We were aiming to drop in at Doug’s Cave, which is apparently a proper cave in which ragged toothed sharks occasionally lie in repose. Because of the current we missed the cave, and instead of fighting current to get back to it, we continued along the reef at a leisurely pace.

Boxy
Boxy

I was very excited to find a sort of overhang that seemed to be a meeting place for trumpetfish. There were two or three underneath the rock, and another one hanging about on a patch of sand in front of the little cave. The dive was incredibly colourful (especially when I got my strobe to fire correctly), and Maurice and Craig helpfully found several nudibranchs, and showed them to me.

Branching soft corals
Branching soft corals

Towards the end of the dive, as we arrived at Birthday Ledges, we once again found the large piece of yellow and red fabric wrapped around part of the reef that we’d seen on our Birthday Ledges dive the previous day. Patrick, our Divemaster (and owner of Calypso) persisted, and managed to unwrap it. Tony confiscated it immediately, and put on quite a show at the safety stop. We’d had a long dive on the Coopers light wreck a couple of hours prior, so we were out of time before we knew it.

Raggy scorpionfish in repose
Raggy scorpionfish in repose

I thought the Blood Reef complex was amazing, with a lot to see. It’s suitable for drift dives in either direction, depending where the current is going (north-south or south-north), and if there’s no current, that’s also fine. It’s a fairly long boat ride by Cape Town or Sodwana standards (if you’re diving Two Mile), but you’re close to shore.

Dive date: 20 June 2013

Air temperature: 23 degrees

Water temperature: 22 degrees

Maximum depth: 20.1 metres

Visibility: 20 metres

Dive duration: 48 minutes

Draping the sarong
Draping the sarong

Dive sites (Durban): Coopers light wreck

Exploring the bow
Exploring the bow

I’ve tried to dive the Coopers light wreck before. It didn’t end well. This time, I was determined to see the wreck, and see it I did, on the third and final day of diving that we did on our Durban trip. The visibility was at least 25 metres – in the range where it almost doesn’t matter what the number is, it’s so fantastic. The water was warm, even at the bottom, and the wreck is something special to see.

Maurice swimming the length of the Coopers light wreck
Maurice swimming the length of the Coopers light wreck

No one knows what the name of the ship that lies wrecked opposite the Cooper lighthouse on the Bluff (hence it being commonly referred to as the Coopers light wreck). There is speculation that it’s an old whaler because of a curious structure on the aft deck that looks like a harpoon gun. It is in fact part of the ship’s steering mechanism – whaling ships had guns on their bows, not at the back of the ship.

Craig explores the bow of the Coopers light wreck
Craig explores the bow of the Coopers light wreck

According to Patrick at Calypso, here is a possibility that this wreck is the Terrier IV, an old whaler chartered by Peter Gimbel and Ron and Valerie Taylor for the filming of their shark documentary Blue Water White DeathThe Terrier sailed from Durban to Sri Lanka to Australia, as recounted by Peter Matthiessen in his book about the trip, entitled Blue Meridian.

I digress. The wreck is about 76 metres long and a bit over 10 metres wide, with a single propellor. There are two huge boilers near the middle of the wreck, and the bow and stern are fairly intact. The wreck and its vicinity teem with harlequin goldies, lionfish, and baitfish. We saw a large ray swimming languidly past behind a curtain of piggies, and a large scorpionfish resting at the bow. The size of the wreck makes it quite suitable to explore in its entirety on a single dive, although it is the kind of place that will bear many repeat visits.

We dived the wreck on 32% Nitrox, which gave us decent bottom time, the wreck lying at a maximum depth of 30 metres on the sand. I was having mask (actually, probably hair) trouble again, however, and used up a fifth of my air just clearing my mask. So I didn’t have as long a dive as I’d have liked.

There’s a nice African Diver article about the wreck here, with some more photos.

Soft corals on the wreck
Soft corals on the wreck

Dive date: 20 June 2013

Air temperature: 24 degrees

Water temperature:  23 degrees

Maximum depth: 29.6 metres

Visibility: 25 metres

Dive duration: 37  minutes

Christo approaching on the wreck
Christo approaching on the wreck

Dive sites (Durban): Birthday Ledges

On the boat waiting to get in at Birthday Ledges
On the boat waiting to get in at Birthday Ledges

After the mask trouble I experienced on Bikini Reef on the morning of 19 June, I was tempted to lie queasily on the beach in my wetsuit (very like a whale) and feel sorry for myself. The rational part of my brain quietly suggested that I should get back in the saddle immediately, and I’m glad I did. The second dive of the day was to Birthday Ledges, which was appropriate given that one of us was celebrating his birthday…

The birthday Batman
The birthday Batman

The boat ride out to the reef is fairly long compared to what we’re used to in Cape Town (it takes around half an hour to get to the SAS Fleur, and that’s as far out as most operators go) and Sodwana. After crossing the harbour entrance (completely thrilling!), we headed south along the Bluff, past the old whaling station – now a police shooting range and out of bounds to the public. Birthday Ledges is at the southern end of the Blood Reef complex in Durban, and is so named because it always throws up some sort of surprise. (Or, because it was discovered on someone’s birthday… Take your pick!)

Raggy scorpionfish
Raggy scorpionfish

We enjoyed a fantastic dive, with lots to look at and wonderful visibility. The reef is quite raised, with the ledge pointing out to sea, and there are many places to look under and into. This high profile provides a lot of habitat for the very territorial tropical fish, and hence much joy to the visiting diver. We saw two large frogfish, resting less than a metre away from each other. I spotted nudibranchs, scorpionfish, moray eels, and trumpetfish.

There was some weird rubbish on the reef, including a huge sheet of yellow and red fabric that our Divemaster tried to untangle from the rocks, unsuccessfully. The Blood Reef system is not far offshore and just around the corner from Durban Harbour, and I think a lot of debris makes its way out there where it gets caught on the reef.

Baby raggy scorpionfish
Baby raggy scorpionfish

Dive date: 19 June 2013

Air temperature: 23 degrees

Water temperature:  22 degrees

Maximum depth: 19.3 metres

Visibility: 20 metres

Dive duration: 46 minutes

 If you’re reading this post in an email, or via an RSS reader, I don’t think the galleries of photos will display properly. If you want to appreciate my (ahem) photographic genius in all its glory, click on the title of the post to view it on the Learn to Dive Today website. A whole new world will be revealed.

Dive sites: Brunswick

Tony and students on the surface over the wreck of the Brunswick
Tony and students on the surface over the wreck of the Brunswick

The Brunswick is a historical wooden shipwreck that lies a few hundred metres off the northern end of Long Beach in Simon’s Town, directly opposite the northern end of the white apartment buildings overlooking the Main Road. Like HNMS Bato, she is infrequently dived. Having lain underwater since 1805, she is heavily overgrown and much of her decking and hull is covered by sand. She used to be a shore entry (with a precipitous climb over the railway line), but in recent years a large number of boulders have been added as a breakwater between the ocean and the railway line, and climbing over in dive gear is no longer possible. For this reason we do the dive from the boat. Close to shore and in shallow water, the Brunswick is an ideal site to get used to boat diving.

Extensive field of wooden decking
Extensive field of wooden decking

The Brunswick was a British East Indiaman, which means she carried men and goods between Britain and the East Indies – (south)east Asia and India. She was carrying a cargo of cotton and sandalwood from China back to Britain when she was captured by some French vessels off Sri Lanka, and brought to Simon’s Bay. In September 1805 her anchor rope parted, and she ran aground during a south easterly gale. Most of her cargo was salvaged, as she lies in shallow (less than six metres deep) water.

We found the dive site to be similar to HNMS Bato, which was also a sturdily built wooden ship of similar vintage. The Brunswick was 1,200 tons, and her wreckage is spread out quite extensively. There are many thick, wooden planks, laid out as they would have been to form her decks, as well as much evidence of the bronze bolts that secured parts of the ship together. There are also many copper bolts, rivets and what could be small amounts of rolled up copper sheathing in evidence on the site.

Anemone among feather stars and papery burnupena
Anemone among feather stars and papery burnupena

The highests parts of the wreck are covered with feather stars, anemones, sea cucumbers, and kelp. There are many octopus, and peering under the wreckage with a torch yielded a couple of very large pyjama catsharks. We were lucky to dive the site most recently on a day with lovely visibility, and the shallowness of the water means that there’s a lot of light penetration which improves things enormously.

The highest parts of the Brunswick wreck
The highest parts of the Brunswick wreck

Before diving this site, you should call the SA Navy Ops Room on 021 787 3818, to ask for permission and to tell them how long you’ll be. Same procedure as at Long Beach.

Dive date: 13 July 2013

Air temperature: 19 degrees

Water temperature: 15 degrees

Maximum depth: 5.4 metres

Visibility: 10 metres

Dive duration: 42 minutes

Mark helps Christo at the boat after the dive
Mark helps Christo at the boat after the dive

Dive sites (Durban): Bikini

A raggy scorpionfish
A raggy scorpionfish

Unfortunately my dive on Bikini – the second one I did in Durban – was really horrible, as my mask kept flooding (I think I had hair caught under the skirt). After a while fighting off the feeling of imminent drowning became too exhausting, and I surfaced early. I didn’t take many photographs, but what I remember of the creatures on view is that they were many and varied – geometric moray eels, lionfish, scorpionfish, nudibranchs, a frogfish and the other usual suspects found on South Africa’s east coast. I took so few photos that I’ve borrowed a lovely one that Maurice took of said eel. Here it is:

Geometric moray eel saying hello
Geometric moray eel saying hello

The reef structure was much like we see at Sodwana, made of sandstone with potholes and little overhangs. I saw mostly soft corals – none of the big plate corals that are common in southern Mozambique and beyond. This reef is part of the Blood Reef system that stretches along parallel to the Bluff. The reef system got its name because the old whaling station used to pump out blood and offal from slaughtered whales into the ocean, causing the reef to thrive and supporting an impressive population of oceanic white tip sharks. We didn’t see any sharks – I’m sure they were all too busy being killed in the gill nets off the Durban beaches to come and visit divers.

Blackspotted (I think) blaasop
Blackspotted (I think) blaasop

Bikini Reef is small, and covers the good bits (this is allegedly the origin of its name). It’s a regular haunt of pineapplefish, but the current was going in the wrong direction for us to comfortably visit the overhang that many of these fish frequent. We had a pleasant drift dive (mask issues aside) and an easy introduction to the Blood Reef complex.

I should mention that my Durban photos are mostly questionably lit and poorly executed because I am using a new camera, and prior to the Durban trip had only done two dives with it! Hopefully matters will improve so I don’t have to revert back to my trusty Sony DSC-TX5. I’m still using the Ikelite AF-35 strobe, though (not that it’s much in evidence here).

Dive date: 19 June 2013

Air temperature: 23 degrees

Water temperature: 22 degrees

Maximum depth: 23.5 metres

Visibility: 20 metres

Dive duration: 28 minutes

Dive sites (Durban): Fontao

The bow of the Fontao
The bow of the Fontao

The Fontao is an old Mozambican prawn trawler, scuttled off Umhlanga in Durban by the Oceanographic Research Institute in 1991. The intention was to study the rate at which wrecks and artificial reefs are colonised by marine organisms. The wreck is small: just under 35 metres long, with a beam of 8 metres. She lies upright on the sand at about 27 metres’ depth, and is largely intact. Tony did an eventful wreck penetration dive here during some of his training at Calypso… Ask him about it!

While waiting for the skipper and Divemaster to hook the anchor to the wreck (common practice in Durban), we were able to socialise with a couple of Indian yellow nosed albatross. These rare birds have incredibly impressive wingspans, and also came to visit us on several subsequent dives hoping we’d brought snacks.

Descending onto the wreck we were greeted with dense clouds of piggies, silvery baitfish that hang around above the wreck and parted gently to allow us to swim through. The wreck is covered with lead sinkers and fishing line, and is a popular fishing destination. Just inside part of the superstructure is a memorial plaque dedicated to a diver (now deceased) who specially enjoyed this dive site.

There is a mosaic floor – apparently prawn trawlers were festive places – and the bow is very beautiful, but because of all the fish it was hard to get a good look at the wreck as a whole (not complaining)! When we dived the Fontao there was a strong current across the wreck, which made me reluctant to stray too far from it lest I got swept off onto the sand.

We dived on air and had a decent-length dive because we spent most of our time on the top of the wreck, which is at about 18 metres. For exploring the bottom and sides of the hull further, Nitrox/enriched air would be a help.

Swimming through piggies on the wreck of the Fontao
Swimming through piggies on the wreck of the Fontao

Dive date: 18 June 2013

Air temperature: 23 degrees

Water temperature:  22 degrees

Maximum depth:  27.2 metres

Visibility: 15 metres

Dive duration: 40 minutes

Dive sites: The Sentinel

Tony in the boat under the Sentinel
Tony in the boat under the Sentinel

I don’t think this dive site has a name (other than what we call it), or that it’s high on anyone else’s list of fun places to dive, but it’s proved to be a reliable and quite lovely site that’s specially suitable for new divers.

The Sentinel is that striking mountain outcrop that stands at the entrance to Hout Bay, dropping off steeply into the Atlantic. Beneath it is a fairly dense kelp forest and a scattering of smallish round boulders that add variation to the underwater landscape. The maximum depth in the area is not more than about eight metres.

Kelp forest
Kelp forest

We dived the site after a dive on the SS Maori, on a day when the visibility was not magnificent, but tolerable. Tony has on many occasions taken students there and found that the water is far cleaner than it is at Duiker Island nearby (probably less run off of seal bodily fluids…) and inside Hout Bay. The site can be a little uncomfortable when it is very surgy, as the movement of the kelp and the seaweed beneath you on the rocks is disconcerting.

Kate is neutrally buoyant
Kate is neutrally buoyant

There are not many large fish – this is typical of the inshore Atlantic sites we dive – but in summer clouds of West coast rock lobster larvae and other fish fry may cause the water to shimmer hazily. I can guarantee you that you will not see a single abalone, though if you swim right up to shore in this area you will see thousands and thousands and thousands of empty abalone shells in the shallows and on the beach. This is where the poachers who rule Hout Bay shuck the perlemoen before carrying them up the mountain to dispose of them.

Dive date: 17 February 2013

Air temperature: 25 degrees

Water temperature:  10 degrees

Maximum depth: 7.6 metres

Visibility: 6 metres

Dive duration:  22 minutes

Coral and seaweed encrusted rock, with limpets
Coral and seaweed encrusted rock, with limpets