YDIVE - Central London BSAC Scuba Diving Club

When my planned Maldives trip was cancelled at the last minute due to the catastrophic Tsunami affecting Southern Asia I was initially gutted but a day spent watching the news coverage soon put my disapointment into perspective. All I had missed was a dive holiday. Others had suffered much, much more.

Still, I had no intention of being in the UK for New Year so I spent the day after Boxing Day desperately trawling the internet looking for a chance to be underwater. All I could find was a week's cruise aboard the Sea Serpent doing the Brothers, Elphinstone and Daedalus itinerary. I was dubious as I was already booked to do Brothers and Elphinstone on the Sea Serpent in July and I was not convinced that this was the best time to go. Still, it was all I could find and it was cheap, very cheap indeed. I made up my mind to go.

My buddy for the Maldives trip opted for a week of romance in St Lucia with his new lady and so I was travelling alone. As it happens this put me in the majority on the boat. Of the 20 passengers, 14 had travelled solo. I guess it was something to do with the time of year. Anyway, it certainly made for a more sociable boat than I was expecting and we saw the New Year in with champagne and a few Sakaras at our mooring in front of the Marriott Hotel in Hurghada.

The skipper had recommended that we take advantage of the unseasonably good weather and so, at the expense of a night dive, we got the longest leg of the trip out of the way and motored south towards Daedalus. We stopped along the way to do a check-out dive on a sandy bottom with scattered corals somewhere near Hurghada and a reef dive close to Safaga. I remember feeling a joy at being underwater again but very little else about either dive. I guess they were useful as a warm up and allowed us to get used to the way the boat operated, equipment was stowed, etc but they couldn't have been more different from the adrenaline packed diving that was to follow.

The excitement started to kick in when, just after dinner, we spied the blinking light of the Big Brother lighthouse far off to port and it was an eager group of divers that gathered for the briefing at dawn having slept through an apparently placid overnight voyage. The briefing was given by a burly Egyptian guide, a great guy but his English was far from perfect. The upshot was that as I clambered aboard the RIB that was to take us to the entry point I, along with most of the rest of the group, had no more than a vague idea of the 'plan' I was about to dive.

What actually happened was that we were split into two 'waves'. Each 'wave' consisted of 6 divers in one RIB and 4 divers plus a guide in the other. The divers from both RIBS entered the water simultaneously and descended down the edge of the wall to 40 metres where the sharks were supposed to be waiting. This meant that there were eleven divers effectively diving as one big group. Added to that the fact that one of the group seemed to be trying to play the Birdy Song on the loudest air horn I've had the misfortune of hearing and that the vis was disappointingly poor, it was little wonder that the only hint of a shark at that point was a smear heading off into the blue at speed. Apparently, it was a hammerhead but frankly I couldn't tell. As the dive progressed and we were drifting back up the wall my buddy and I managed to drift off the back of the group and we had a couple of sightings of a gray reef shark.

The guide gave the briefing for the second dive on Daedalus and again it was a bunch of confused divers that entered the water. I did know that we were supposed to swim with the reef on our left hand shoulder but that was into a hefty current. I'm not one for swimming against the tide and I quickly suggested to my buddy that we turn round and go with the flow. Eventually all the other buddy pairs followed suit but we had been the first to turn and so were happy to find ourselves on our own only a few minutes into the dive. We stayed at about 25 metres for most of the drift. This isn't the best place to view the reef and anyway we spent most of the time staring out into the blue.

We had given up on the prospect of shark action and had just come up to about 12 metres. I took one last look into the blue and was preparing to turn my attention to the wall when a dark shape appeared in the distance. I glanced excitedly towards my buddy. He had seen it too. The tail was unmistakable. It was a thresher shark, it's body about a metre long but it's tail more than doubled it's length. It slowly came to within a couple of metres, checking us out with it's incredible big black eye and then effortlessly disappeared into the gloom. The whole encounter lasted less than thirty seconds but transformed what would have otherwise been a dull and frustrating dive into one which I will never forget.

The final dive on Daedalus was similar to the second, again the current wasn't playing ball and again my buddy and I were the first to give in and drift. This time though there was no shark action.

That evening, as we headed off to Elphinstone, there was a certain amount of discontent amongst the passengers. The vis had been poor on all three dives, the briefings were poor and the mob-handed approach wasn't conducive to seeing sharks. There was nothing that could be done about the first complaint and sadly the vis remained disapointing throughout the trip. The second was resolved by a number of passengers having a word with Dray, the affable Dutch guide who was both knowledgable about the sites and fluent in English. He promised to take over the briefings from then on and this he did although this did cause a certain amount of conflict with the Egyptian guide. As to the third complaint, my buddy and I agreed with a couple of like-minded buddy pairs that we would ensure that we were in a RIB as a six and that we would contrive, where practicable, to ensure that we entered the water either well before or well after the divers from the other RIB. This we did and on the whole it worked reasonably well although, even though we were the only boat at Daedalus and the Brothers, there were certain dives where we were aiming for a particular point (eg the cleaning station on Small Brother) where inevitably there were too many divers about.

The first dive on Elphinstone was a hard swim against the current in a vain attempt to get to the North plateau. After a couple of minutes hard finning and getting nowhere we gave in and allowed ourselves to drift back towards the south plateau where the boat had been moored. Gasping for breath I noticed the shadow of an Oceanic White Tip near the surface. The drift back was spent staring hopefully into the blue and so I didn't get a good feel for our speed but it must have been pretty quick. After only 25 minutes I could make out the boat's ladders. We had drifted the entire length of the eastern side of Elphinstone in that time. There didn't seem to be much to see and I was just wondering how we were going to entertain ourselves for the remaining 35 minutes dive time when I spotted it. A 3 metre Oceanic White Tip cruising near the surface. There were two of them and they didn't seem in the least bit bothered by the divers in the water. In fact, they swam amongst us, at times coming very, very close. I managed to get a few good photos but spent most of the next 25 minutes simply enjoying the proximity of these amazing creatures.

The second dive was very similar to the first and the Oceanic White Tips were still there but we strayed out of the lee of the south plateau soon after arriving there and were caught in the current so aborted the dive relatively quickly.

We were then given the choice of doing a third dive on Elphinstone under the boat with the Oceanics or a dive at Marsa Shuna (where there was a prospect of a Dugong) followed by a night dive. We chose the latter option.

Marsa Shuna is a sheltered site with a shallow reef surrounding a sandy bottom and a field of sea grass. The instructions seemed straightforward. Follow the reef for fifty metres or so then swim perpendicular to it and you would hit the sea grass which was in the middle of the bay. My buddy and I spent most of the time hopelessly lost and when we did eventually find the sea grass I barely realised that we had done so. I was expecting swaying fronds. Instead we found clumps of weeds barely an inch high. Needless to say we didn't spot a dugong. The dive was only rescued from being a total waste of time by the appearance of a turtle early on.

I nearly didn't bother with the night dive but they are forbidden on the marine park and so this was to be our only opportunity to do one. It was faintly surreal kitting up in the dark to the sound of driving rock music. We were diving the reef we had earlier abandoned in search of sea grass and for various complicated reasons were diving as a four, my buddy acting as lighting man for a videographer and me and another diver spotting for them.

I have a cheap and not very powerful torch and I spent most of the dive with it switched off either using the video light to see by or just enjoying the bio-luminescence. This turned out to be one of the best dives of the week. Masked puffer fish, lion fish and blue spotted stingrays are all nice to see on a night dive but then we had the feather stars, a couple of Spanish Dancers (I'd never seen one before), one of which danced, a beautiful little cuttle fish, a tiny yellow headed moray and to top it all an eagle ray swam in to check us out before being startled away by the beams of four torches turned on it all at once.

The wind, which had been so kind to us, turned that night and the trip to the Brothers was a rough one. It didn't help that my cabin was at the front of the boat and so not only suffered the effects of the waves more than those further back but the shape of the bow meant that the cabin was narrower than the others and the space was reclaimed by putting one of the beds (mine) bunk style above the wardrobes. I got very little sleep that night. Needless to say I shall be requesting a cabin nearer the back when I do the trip in the summer.

We did two dives on Big Brother the following day, both on wrecks. I judge a wreck by the amount of life on it and so the Namibia, which lies at the northern tip of the island and which we dived second was the hands down winner on that score, teeming with life of splendid variety and graced by a grey reef shark. We did a little penetration of Aida II and I'm sure that wreck enthusiasts will find much to entertain them but the life was disappointing. On the drift back from Aida we spotted a large thresher shark ten metres below us at about 30 metres.

For some reason we did the third dive of the day on Small Brother. The plan was to dive the north plateau. Unfortunately, the current was fairly strong and so we were dropped into the blue. After three minutes of swimming we eventually found reef but had missed the plateau. However the drift back along the west wall was very scenic and we were accompanied by a Napoleon for most of the way. Sharks had apparently been spotted on the south plateau but it was a hard swim against the current to get round the corner and after a brief attempt and with my buddy low on air we gave in and returned to the boat.

The next morning, shortly after dawn, we dived the north plateau again and this time we made the cleaning station. Sadly there was nothing there although we waited patiently until prompted by our computers to leave. We drifted off the back of our little group and had a really pleasant slow pootle back along the east wall. When we got back to the boat we discovered that the divers who had rushed ahead had all seen several sharks on the south plateau!

For the second dive we were presented with a choice and a massive dilemna. We could either dive the southern plateau from the boat with a seeming guarantee of grey reef sharks or we could dive the cleaning station again. Most people opted for the guaranteed sharks. After quite a bit of internal debate my buddy and I opted to join the smaller group in the RIB heading for the cleaning station. We dropped in on the east side and followed the reef down towards the cleaning station. As we approached the corner I spotted Dray a few metres ahead making frantic shark signals. We finned hard to catch up and there cruising in the blue were a couple of grey reef sharks.

And there it was. The distinctive shape I had been hoping to see all trip, a hammerhead about five or six metres away. I glanced to my right and closer still was a big thresher shark. A few seconds later and both were gone but it was an awesome moment being so close to two of the most incredible creatures in the sea.

The last dive of the day was an uneventful exploration of the south plateau of Big Brother and then we were heading back north towards Hurghada, stopping a couple of times on the final day to do scenic reef dives at Panorama Reef and Ras Eldsha.

Looking back now I guess I had expected to see more sharks. I suspect they were there but the poor vis meant that we didn't see them. However, the quality of the sightings we were lucky enough to experience more than made up for any lack of quantity. I spent an awful lot of time staring out into the blue and probably missed out on some stunning coral but these sites for me were all about sharks and I suspect that when I go back in the summer I'll be doing the same thing. It is easy to see why these sites are limited to divers with at least 50 dives. A lot of the sites are at or around 40 metres and there are some treacherous currents. With that in mind I'm going to make sure that I'm a lot fitter for the next trip.

Ah, the next trip. I can't wait...