Red Sea Odyssey Part 1 – Into the Deep South

Now, this is my idea of a check out dive!

Shortly after pulling out of Port Ghalib on the central region of Egypt’s Red Sea coast, we pulled up to our first dive site at Abu Dahab Reef. Abu Dahab along with it’s neighboring reef Shaab Marsa Alam featured a general reef profile that I would see again and again in that top reef starts near 0 feet from the surface dropping sharply downward.

Being that this was going to be our first dive of a 13-day dive adventure aboard the 159-foot liveaboard Scuba Scene, the bottom edge of the reef bottoms out at a depth between 32 ft / 10 m and 65 ft / 20 m. Across this broad plateau stood an interesting collection of 8 to 15-foot column shaped coral formations, on top of which were alive with an assortment of orange anthias.

Working on some shots to get things started for my Red Sea photo library. I saw something large and grey colored on the edge of my peripheral vision coming at me. Turning my head, my mind instantly clicked; that’s a bottlenose dolphin!

Before I could get a decent shot, this spirited cetacean had zipped off before buzzing a few other divers in the group. Thinking that encounter was over, my assumption was quickly proven wrong.