Egypt Day 9: Gordon Reef & Kormoran "Fail"

Woke up a bit later today and just managed to have some breakfast before I went diving with Sven on my own, Jon and Johanna preferring to have a rest today morning. I had a bit of stomach cramps, but I didn't want to abandon Sven. Who knows, we might see a shark. Went diving at Gordon Reef in a rather full Zodiac, so it took a while for us to jump in. When we jumped in there where dozens of divers down there already, so we weren't expecting anything unusual. Ali (dive guide) pointed out a blue spotted stingray near to the beginning and Sven and me spotted a scorpion fish doing a mad dash for some cover. He took a while walking along the bottom of the sandy reef. Dived on and lagged behind the group a bit, so I motioned to Sven to catch up a bit. Spotted a clown fish on the way and when we caught up Ali was pointing out a murrain eel, which had been hiding in a barrel. There was a couple there and the man was trying to take photographs, but kept crashing in to the reef and lying on it. Not something you normally do. We nearly reached the decompression time limit in the end and had to resurface. In the last moment Ali motioned with his hand that a shark was up ahead and just like by the eagle ray, in the first moment I just saw a tail fin. Luckily it turned round and a few moments later we had a white tipped reef shark swim about ten metres under us. Resurfaced and got back in to the Zodiac and went back to have some lunch.

In the afternoon it was Jon, Johanna, Sven, Ali, Yvonne (another German) and me going diving at the Kormoran ship wreck. On the way we saw two dolphins swimming the way to where we where going diving, so we followed them a while. We jumped in to not so deep water (only about five metres) and where greeted by some mackerel fish which swam up really close. Got a picture as I had my Nikon with me on this dive.

Also saw a swarm of small, sometimes glittery fish which Johanna herded right in to my face. Ali disappeared at one point, back to the surface to talk with the captain. It turned out we had missed the wreck by a few hundred metres. Sea was still interesting with steps of hard corals and a few fish. Nearly bumped in to a scorpion fish and I could really see a pressure point evolving on the centre of my display of the camera. Turned round halfway through and Johanna had to race forwards to get Jon as he had run of. She said when she reached him and told him to turn round, they could not see the rest of the group (us) any more. They came back and we enjoyed a nice dive in the most colourful depth of the corals (about 5 metres). Sven and me took a picture of two very active and inquisitive Lion Fish. Whilst we where concentrating on one the other one sneaked up to us from the right and got within under a metre. They where pointing there stings at us the whole time and I don't know how poisonous they are (I know they are not to be messed with). Carried on and Jon tried to pull Johanna down when she had surfaced. Back to the main land for a shower and to write our log books.

More pictures at Picasa and a link to the reef map here 

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Diving time: 111 min.

Diving depth: 23,0 meters

Speciality: Shark in the morning and missed a wreck in the afternoon