{"id":392,"date":"2009-08-16T14:05:34","date_gmt":"2009-08-16T13:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/?p=392"},"modified":"2010-09-06T00:17:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T23:17:48","slug":"sharm-july-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/reports\/sharm-july-2009","title":{"rendered":"Sharm el Sheikh, July 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I headed out to Sharm for a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

More “no surpises” in terms of dive centre (Red Sea College) or accommodation (Hilton Fayrouz).<\/p>\n

There was a problem with my Viking flight being delayed, which meant I didn’t get to bed until 5:30am. I missed the first day of my Cavern Diver course (the TDI flavour<\/a>, with Christian at PURE<\/a>), but managed to catch up.<\/p>\n

Once that was sorted, I was able to get on with the photos …<\/p>\n

I’d taken my brand new 14-54mm lens, and ended up using that exclusively all week (I’d also taken the 11-22mm, which uses the same port, but never used it). I actually think that a “general purpose” lens like this is ideal for dayboat diving at Sharm. I don’t like opening my housing on the boat, and you never really know what you’re going to get on any given dive. As it turns out, I was very happy with it, and I’ll put together a separate review later.<\/p>\n

I like to make a note in these pieces of any unusual stuff going on – this year, there were four things worth mentioning.<\/p>\n

Candelamoa parrotfish “swarming”<\/h4>\n

You quite often see the odd Candelamoa (aka “long-nosed”) parrotfish Hipposcarus harid<\/em><\/a> on the reef, but on 14th July (which was around a neap tide, following full moon) there were hundreds of them shoaling (and heading north) from Ras Mohammed. On the three dives that day, we saw shoals on all of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Far Garden cleaner wrasse<\/h4>\n

One of the third dives was on Far Garden. I’d missed everything big that day – the Whitetip on Gordon Reef, the hammerheads hadn’t turned up (in fact, I didn’t see any on the whole trip. though they were there) and I missed the Manta on this dive. But just as we got round the headland, I felt a tweak on my leg, and remembered the cleaners. They had a go at my fins as well ….<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

The Dolphins<\/h4>\n

Once again, we had some company from a pod of Risso’s dolphins. Not as spectacular as last year, but these encounters are always emotional …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My MANTA<\/h4>\n

I’ve never really seen a Manta. There were a couple off in the distance on my first dive in Bunaken, but they were way off and not hanging about.<\/p>\n

The first dive on my last day sorted that, though. Just after we’d jumped in on Ras Ghazlani, we dropped down (to 18m) near a pinnacle. There were a few fish just hanging off the pinnacle. And I realised one of them was an unusual shape …<\/p>\n

Yup. A Manta (actually, it may have been a Mobula, but it looked a bit big). So I eased up to 13m and got a few shots off while he swooped around a couple of times, then headed off into the blue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’ll be more photos when I finally get my act together with my gallery software …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks in Sharm in the summer … can’t beat it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,58,123,32,89,30,43,29,28],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports","tag-dolphin","tag-egypt","tag-manta","tag-ras-mohammed","tag-red-sea","tag-red-sea-diving-college","tag-scuba-diving","tag-sharm-el-sheikh","tag-trip-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muttznutz.net\/muttzblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}