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Woodhouse Reef

Woodhouse reef is often used as a bail out reef. A slightly unfair title, as there are some truly beautiful parts of this reef, however it is nearly a kilometre long and offers good shelter should the wind be kicking off and waves crashing on the North side of the reefs. So, we often save this site for windy days, choosing to dive the other sites when the conditions are good.

Again like Thomas, this has to be done as a drift dive, with a current check at the beginning to ensure that we get the best direction. As the currents usually run from South to North, we usually dive the site with the reef on our left hand side (like all the Tiran Reefs), although this is one site that I particularly love diving in reverse, as there is a little canyon that sits at around 30M that we can visit at the start of the dive. On its edge at around 28M sits a glorious red anenome, with really long skinny tentacles, which is very pretty to take in before shallowing up. When diving in the normal direction, I tend not to spend too much time at depth and the canyon appears towards the end of the dive. Shortly after the start of the normal dive there are some very pretty plateaus at about 18-20M which because of the glorious visibility here, are still very colourful even at this depth. Once I have passed the first of these plateaus however, I tend to shallow off to about 12M where you really do get the sunshine and colours coming out in their full glory.

As I said, this site is nearly 1KM long, so we tend to get a lovely long drift here, only having to turn around on rough days right at the very end. There is also a beautiful garden plateauing out at the end of the reef. However it is not always possible to visit this area if the currents are running, or if the sea is rough around the back.

We do also have to be careful of a phenomena called the washing machine at the end of this dive. The next reef along is Jackson, and there is actually a relatively shallow saddle between them. Because of this saddle, it is possible to dive from one reef to the other (only with very experienced divers who are very good on their air and only if conditions are right) If the currents are running, there is often a clash of forces where the two currents hit each other, colide and form a whole array of up currents, down currents, and vortexes. It is most important towards the end of the drift on Woodhouse to ensure you do not allow yourself to get pulled away from the reef and into this area. Again, staying behind your guide will ensure your safety here.

Another way of diving Woodhouse reef is if conditions are flat, and we are able to drop in and drift along the outside or back of the reef. Like Thomas and Gordon, the style of reef is quite different on this side, again with plenty of overhangs, very much a wall and due to it's Northerly aspect, a little cooler and a little spookier. The bonus of diving this side of Woodhouse in particular, is that some of these overhangs have created small caves inside which we sometimes find baby white tipped reef sharks! They are sooo cute, very shiny and perfectly new, with not a scratch on them. They are quite shy and will hide in these caves most of the time. They are only about a metre long, but are still sharks and really quite fantastic to see.

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