Kategorie: News
Diving holiday in Makadi Bay
Recently, negative reports about Egypt have been on the rise. Coral bleaching, low fish stocks and a series of shipping accidents. A good reason to check whether everything is still okay in the land of the pharaohs...
Report and images by Jan Finsterbusch
Our destination this time is Makadi Bay. The bay was artificially excavated in the 1990s to create a destination for high-end tourism. In the meantime, a wide variety of reef dwellers have found their home here and can be ‘visited’ from the jetty.
The house reef is always open
The Scuba World Divers center is connected to the Jaz Makadina, but guests can also be picked up from the surrounding hotels. Another advantage of the bay: even if the sea is ‘closed’ due to storms or official announcements, the house reef is always open. In addition, half-day and full-day trips are offered, weather permitting. The package is rounded off by a short trip in the afternoon.
We are warmly welcomed by the staff at the dive center: first the usual paperwork, then an informative tour of the center! Where are the lockers, where do you get the keys, and where are the suits and jackets hung up? Finding the house reef is easier than remembering the locker number! And that's exactly what we choose next!
A special check dive
Less than an hour later, we escape the scorching Egyptian sun and sink into the refreshing 24 degrees of Makadi Bay. Since we've known each other for a while, Isa, the base manager, takes over the check dive herself and shows us a frogfish. In addition to the usual suspects of the Red Sea (blue-spotted stingrays, lionfish, pufferfish, etc.), this is a real highlight!
We are increasingly finding our typical holiday mode: eating, sleeping and simply enjoying the time... and, of course, letting ourselves be surprised by the diversity of the sea every day. As the weather and wind forecasts are rather negative for the coming days, we decide to focus on the boat trips for now.
A challenging dive site
Soon we are sitting on the small felucca and heading for one of the ‘forgotten’ dive sites. This was explored a long time ago but has rarely been visited since. Demanding, deep and challenging in terms of its profile. El Malek is characterised by a sloping plateau and the gentle current drives us further and further into the depths of the ocean. No, the dive site is not really a standard part of the programme, but it can be organised flexibly if there are enough experienced divers at the centre or if a diving club with the right mix of divers announces its intention to visit.
The next day, we go on another Explorer Dive: there is a wreck off the Shaab El Arab dive site, which has not been visited for quite some time. All we find are a few frames of the hull. Otherwise, nature has reclaimed everything. We quickly decide to follow the steep wall instead. As we surface, we realise that the light breeze has turned into a strong wind. The waves, more than two metres high, make the way back to the boat – especially with a camera – a challenging experience.
There's nothing happening on the outer reefs today, so we return to the house reef. Describing the biodiversity here would fill pages, so we'll focus on the highlights. Winged fish? Again and again! Unpredictable but often just there. Seahorses? Quite reliable at the moment. A ghost pipefish was spotted in the house reef last week, but has since taken a holiday and has not graced us with its presence. Instead, we repeatedly encounter trusting octopods that don't even react when we float ten centimetres in front of them, eye to eye.
Surprises at the jetty
After the weather has calmed down, we head back to the offshore reefs in the hope of encountering something larger. Of course, our special friends, the dolphins, are nowhere to be seen! But we've come to expect that by now. Instead, a large Napoleon fish crosses our path and eyes us sceptically before disappearing back into the deep blue. So, all's well and we head back to the house reef. To our great surprise, we actually find a leaf scorpionfish under the jetty of the neighbouring hotel. And what a beauty! Of course, we know this fish from the Indian Ocean, but we have never seen one in the Red Sea before.
At this point, we must address a sad topic. Many divers are currently talking about coral bleaching in the Red Sea. And we're hearing things from the south that don't bode well. But this isn't the case in the Hurghada area yet. Almost all the hard corals are intact and life is flourishing. This is certainly no reason to carry on as before and continue to push our ecosystem to the brink, but it is nevertheless an indication that the Egyptian Red Sea coast is much longer than is often realised.
It actually feels like we arrived yesterday, and yet it is the evening before our flight home. A touch of melancholy sets in! Even the large ice cream sundae we are given with our coffee does little to help. This country has so many friendly and helpful people, even if everything feels chaotic at first.
Time for a brief summary...
Who is Makadi Bay suitable for?
The Jaz Hotel offers high-quality accommodation. With the affiliated dive centre Scuba World Divers, you have a partner who is safety-conscious, divides groups appropriately and is still flexible when it comes to groups of experienced divers. It's not a small centre, but it's well organised to cover all areas.
This means that divers with families or non-diving partners also feel at home here. There is plenty of space for beginners to explore the underwater world. A suitable atmosphere can also be created for groups. This will certainly not be our last visit here.
Further information:
Scuba World Divers
Scuba World Divers Makadi Bay on Taucher.Net