In late January-early February of 2007 I joined a group diving in the Red Sea near Marsa Alam. The choice of Marsa Alam was made because it was to be much more pristine and less commercial than closer to the Sinai Peninsula.

We saw very few other dive boats on the entire trip but the reefs weren't as pristine as we thought they would be.

We had terrible weater at the start of our trip. It was windy and VERY cold. The air temperatures were in the low 50s in the mornings and rarely got out of the 60s. The water was much warmer around 70F-72F but getting out of your wetsuit was always a race to get out of it as quickly as possible and get into a hot shower. Later in the week the winds died down considerably and it got much warmer.

The diving itself was mostly pretty shallow with max depts around 50'-60'. The only deep dive of the week was to Eliphistone. Some of most interesting animals we saw were Dolphins, Guitar Ray, lots of Lionfish, Spanish Dancers, aggressive Clownfish and lots of little Shrimp.

Overall, it was a good dive trip. It's probably not worth the trip to the Red Sea from the USA just for the diving. If you're already in Europe it's a relatively easy and inexpensive trip. However if you're visiting Egypt to see the other sites it's well worth doing some diving as well.

You can read me at the links below. The trip site is still under construction so check back in a couple weeks when it'll hopefully be complete.