Better Dead than Red? — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

The Dead Sea was our last stop in Jordan. On the way there, the hills had interesting layers of different minerals -

We were surprised at how blue the sea was -

The stillness of the water allowed some neat reflections:

As we stepped into the water, we saw some neat shimmering (salinity-clines,, like thermoclines?)

It was so fun to walk deeper into the water and find that when you were submerged to chest level, you suddenly weren’t walking on the bottom anymore, but suspended. Because the salinity is 33% (10x saltier than the ocean), you cannot sink. If you didn’t consciously keep your legs vertically under you, your feet literally popped out of the water.

Our next stop was to fly back to Egypt, to join the group from our local dive shop in Nashville, for a week of diving in the Red Sea. We stayed in the southern region of the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt.

The Red Sea has higher salinity than other oceans, so I needed to carry more lead weights in order to descend. Also, because the water was relatively cold (for me) at 75-78 degrees, I had a really thick wetsuit (7mm), necessitating yet more lead. Including the weight of the wetsuit and lead I needed to descend, I was carrying an extra 35 pounds over what I’ve needed on other dive trips. it really was exhausting. Steve dove without a wetsuit and carried 13 pounds of lead.

Our boat:

That picture was taken from a lighthouse on a reef out in the middle of the Sea, that we climbed to watch the sun set.

I know you’re just dying to see fish pictures, so here goes…

Those are all creatures that we had never seen before, and are only found in the Indian Ocean or Red Sea.

This Napoleon wrasse was huge (as big as me), and quite friendly -

We saw tons of giant clams with gorgeous mantles -

Now for some videos from our first night dive. I don’t usually dive at night because I get so cold when I get out. However, because of all my neoprene, I was toasty on every dive, and really enjoyed this dive because of all the things we saw. Underwater was all lit up due to everyone’s flashlights, so please forgive all the moving lights…

We thought we had seen some pretty big moray eels in the Caribbean, but the Giant Moray eels in the Red Sea put them to shame. This guy’s body was at least as thick as Steve’s thigh -

Now for some artsy photos…