Diving Experiences.

[Susue]

Just thought I'd ask about memorable diving experiences in the Red Sea.... good or bad!

I worked as a diving instructor in Hurghada for many years...
My most memorable experience was...

I had a family from Holland... totally new students on their first ever open-water dive...
I took them to Gota Abu Ramada, which , divers know, is a very shallow safe and quiet divesite... with lots of pretty fish!!

We did the obligatory underwater exercises, then proceeded to take off for a tour of the reef.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared a 2 metre SHARK!!!!
My students stopped dead in their tracks... I was thinking "Omygod.... please don't let them panic!!"
They looked to me for guidance...I was very calm, gave them the "OK" sign.... we just looked at the shark, and watched him swim away.... he was about 5 metres away from us!!

When we got back to the boat, my students were ecstatic..... how many people on their first dive ever come so close to a shark??

One of the divemasters from my boat had his camera, and photographed the shark...... otherwise I don't think anyone would have believed us!!

Anyone else had memorable diving experiences??

[Netyoda]

My first ever diving experience was in the Red Sea.

I took to it like a duck to water, but my partner was very nervous and the instructor was brilliant.

We were just diving on a small reef just offshore used by Emperor divers for "Discover Suba" and the instructor led my partner round while I followed behind.

As we were just about to finish the dive, the instructor signalled for us to stop and look up.

All around us, in a huge circle, was a wall of barracuda, all identical and about 12 inches in length. There must have been around 2000 of them in a cylinder enclosing us. I grabbed my camera and went to take a snap only to realise that I'd just run out of film

I was an amazing sight though, and we stayed for about 5 minutes while the school circled us. What in introduction to diving!

Lee