Man-Made – Page 45 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Diving in Jordan

Diving in the Red Sea is rated by many as the best diving they have ever done. To many people the Red Sea is in Egypt as most of the renowned dive sites operate from live-a-boards from Egyptian cities.

However if you are like me and prefer the less travelled road and enjoy smaller groups and out of the way places, then Jordan is an extremely good option. Dive Aqaba located in the town of Aqaba in Jordan is the place to go.

Sunken tank in Jordan — This tank was placed as an artificial reef by order of the King of Jordan, who is a diving fanatic!

A PADI IDC Centre run by Rod Ibbotson and Ashraf Sulaibi, Dive Aqaba has everything you need. They run an amazing day boat which has recently had a major face lift and upgrade and was in my opinion an amazing dive boat when I was there but must be stunning now.

The boat runs out of the harbor daily and returns in the late afternoon. Between dives you are fed a meal they call lunch, an understatement of note as it is more of a feast. Having lived there for several months I tried many of the local restaurants and none of the amazing meals came close to the food served on the boat Laila 1. In the middle of winter when the water was cold (21 degrees celsius!) you are served hot soup, tea, coffee etcetera between dives. The kit up area on the boat is spacious, the dining area like a small restaurant and the upper deck a perfect spot to sit and absorb the desert sun on the trip out to the dive sites and back to shore.

Aqaba has an amazing array of dive sites for everyone, from snorkeling to deep technical dives, wall diving and the most amazing wrecks. My favorite dive there was the wreck of the Cedar Pride.

Cedar Pride wreck — The wreck of the Cedar Pride in the Red Sea

The Cedar Pride was damaged by a fire in 1982 whilst in the Port of Aqaba. In 1985 she was towed out and scuttled 150 metres from the beach and now lies in 28 metres of water on her starboard side. The Min depth is 10 metres and the max is 28 metres so it is a perfect dive for all qualifications and even has entry points for penetration, swim through and a swim through under the bow. The ship is about 75 metres long and with an average viz of 20 – 25 metres the Cedar Pride is an amazing site.

The city of Aqaba has an amazing array of clubs, hotels, bars and shops, and is safe and clean. It is a very pleasant place to stroll around in. Internet cafés are all over and there is wifi in most restaurants, not to mention hubbly bubblies everywhere.

Rod has been instrumental in many issues of conservation in the bay of Aqaba, has discovered wrecks, dive sites and many other wonders of the deep and will ensure you leave Jordan with a sense of satisfaction seldom found anywhere in the world.

Exploring: Sunny Cove

Tony has been wanting to dive Sunny Cove practically since he first set foot in Cape Town, having read in an old book on South African dive spots (The Dive Sites of South Africa – Anton Koornhof) that seahorses had been found there in the sea grass. Tony loves seahorses.

I put my foot down, repeatedly, until it was the dead of winter and the Sharkspotters website told me that not a single great white had been seen patrolling the coast for a couple of months. Sunny Cove is at the end of Jagger Walk, the catwalk that runs along the western edge of Fish Hoek Bay. It’s the site of at least one fatal munching by a great white, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

Sunny Cove railway station — View from the bridge over the railway line towards the dive site

It’s a shore entry, and we parked on the road at the bottom of the steps over the railway line. It’s quite a strenuous walk over the bridge with all your kit on. We spent a while figuring out where to get in – you have to clamber over some rocks, and make your way through dense kelp before getting to a clear spot. Once we decided where to get in, we were glad to be wearing thick wetsuits, otherwise we would have been scraped and scratched quite liberally! There is a huge submerged concrete block just where we got in – at first I tried to swim over it, but realised it was in only a few centimetres of water, and made my way around it. (Fortunately there was no one on the shore with a camera!) Cape Town shore diving is hard on your kit.

Sunny Cove — Our entry point is on the far left, almost out of the photo, where the straight piece of rock sticks out.

The actual dive site is aptly named. The sun streams in through the kelp, and the sea floor looks a lot like Shark Alley near Pyramid Rock – lots and lots of urchins, with pink-encrusted rock formations. We saw a little bit of sea grass, and spent a lot of time examining it for signs of life, but didn’t even find a pipe fish, let alone seahorses! There’s a lot of invertebrate life on the rocks – feather stars, brittle stars, abalone – and we saw quite a few fish.

We did see the deep channel that the sharks probably use to get in and out of Fish Hoek Bay. We were hoping to spot the beacon that records movements by tagged sharks past Sunny Cove, but no luck there. We did not explore much to the south of our entry point – that’s on the to do list (along with more sea horse hunting) for another shark-free day.

Verdict: Shallow, easy dive but a fairly tricky entry and exit. Infrequently dived, so rather more lush and unspoiled than busier sites. Videos of our dive are here and here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaxvdFG4Fdg&w=540]

Dive date: 4 July 2010

Air temperature: 21 degrees

Water temperature: 13 degrees

Maximum depth: 10 metres

Visibility: 6 metres

Dive duration: 32 minutes