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Ras Za'atar
Past the vast bay of Marsa Bareika, the next dive site we encounter is Ras Za'atar. On land this is most noticeable by its interesting cliff formation. It looks as though at some point in time, the land was shaken like a duvet, leaving two huge ripples in the land. It is these two ripples that form the cliffs found at the starting point of our dive.
As with all Ras Mohammed dives, this is done as a drift dive. We usually jump in on the outside of the bay, and descend by its sloping wall. Unlike Ras Ghozlani, there is no sandy plateau here. The wall is admittedly not quite vertical, but still slopes on a steep diagonal down to depth, where you can just about make out some kind of sand in the deep. One of the best features of this site, is very early on in the dive, usually the first ten minutes at around twenty two metres, where we find a huge arm of coral sticking out from the reef. This arm of coral supports a spectacular table coral as well as a glorious gorgonian fan and can be seen looming up in the distance form quite a way away. Depending on the time of year, this coral can be covered with juvenile anthias and glass fish. Of course when you get the little fish, you inevitably get the hunters hanging around too, so this is another place to spend a little time to take in the marvel.
Whilst I know there is a red anenome at this depth on the corner, I very rarely stay down this deep once I have seen this table coral. So I usually multilevel up to the relative shallows of twelve metres where I can take in the folds of the reef plate. It is quite cool to weave in and out of the gullies formed by the folds in the reef here. In the morning this dive is quite colourful, however in the afternoon it can be quite dark and moody. However don't be put off by that, as the sun behind the reef folds can create some great light effects as the beams shaft down into the depths.
As we reach the corner, the current usually increases a touch, as does the fish life and colour, with shoals of fusiliers hanging out in the blue. This is one of those dives where anything can pass by as we are diving very close to very deep water. I have seen white tipped reef sharks here in the afternoon. I witnessed other divers seeing a whale shark here too, completely out of season and during a dive that I very lazily sat out (I was a guest at the time and had spent the dive sat on the boat chatting about how much I wanted to see a whale shark!! Doh). To this day both Eloise and I remember this dive... she was one of the lucky ones in the water.
As the dive turns the corner, to the West, the wall shallows off to more of a sloping garden, dotted with corals, sandy bits and lots of colour. Bizarrely after our storms this winter, I have seen bits of tree here too! I can only imagine that they were from the mangroves and got blown over by the winds.
It is quite nice after a while, to turn the dive around, and finish off in the shallows where there is a very pretty cave full of glass fish. Perfect safety stop depth.
Ras Mohammed
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