Dive like an Egyptian

The Red Sea is enchanting. I know this from my 1st trip to Egypt this time last year; it was the two 'try dives' I did then that inspired me to learn how to do it properly. I joined Swale Sub Aqua Club when I got home and have been training with them since.

My most recent dives were a few months back at the end of November - a Club weekender to Portland in Dorset. The sea water temperature was 10 degrees and we surfaced to sleet. The Red Sea at Marsa Uum Gerifat today was a much more pleasing 22 C - with a wet suit on it felt like a warm bath. My try dive instructor last year was a young Egyptian guy called Karim. He'd been kind and patient and held my hand as I tried to overcome my brain's underwater evacuation manoeuvres. So it was great that he was our guide again today on our house reef orientation dive.

I know from the more experienced divers in my club that a degree of anxiety before a dive is to be expected. Even though I am much more familiar now with what to expect, those first few minutes are spent trying to wrestle brain control from the sub-conscious automatic to the manual over-ride that is needed to enable it to accept that - kitted up - you can indeed breathe underwater. We jump from the wooden jetty, our faith contained in neoprene and compresed air.

The fishes and the coral are so brightly coloured here it is as if someone has run riot with all the colours from a child's paintbox. Purple with yellow spots? Check. Orange, white and black stripes? Certainly sir. Egyptian law prevents the wearing of diving gloves to help minimise damage to this natural underwater theme park - it is strictly 'look but don't touch' down here. It's a mutual stand-off that suits both parties; the coral is left undamaged by enquiring hands; and the diver remains unburnt / stung / poisoned by the self-defence mechanisms of the creatures & plants in the sub aqua zoo.

Diving really is the art of slow personified. There really is nothing to rush for, just observation of the fishes doing their fishy thing and the coral growing as inperceptibly as a glacier does on land. Karim - also my 'buddy' on this dive - leads us along at a sedate pace as we follow the gentle slope of the sea bed downwards. Around us the coral towers cathedral-like and massive, its imposing size in contradiction to its fragility. Karim guides us through a natural underwater canyon and we dive low and slow, passing among arches and loops in the coral. It is amazing and terrifying in equal measure. I notice I'm running low on air so for a while I breathe in tandem with Karim, sharing his tank via the octopus - the spare regulator that all divers carry for the purpose.

Down here normal means of communication are useless, so the international diving community operates a series of universal hand signals. Underwater, I 'hear' a running commentary in my head consisting of my buddy's signals and intentions and my own thoughts about what I'm feeling and seeing. The seascape is in constant motion. Glance up and shoal of silver fish flash life knife blades in the sun. Look ahead, there's a jellyfish, an octopus, a clown fish, a thousand and one living things going about their business unpeturbed and undisturbed by us in our ungainly kit. This is their world and they pay us no more attention than if we were shadows.

Too soon we're back at the landing stage and killing the 3 minute safety stop by watching yellow parrot fish watching each other. Up the steps and back on the jetty once more, nose running with snot and throat full of phlegm as the crew help us remove our tanks until we stand leaden and weighty on our own feet once more. We've been underwater for 50 minutes - it feels like seconds. David's signed up for a night dive this evening. After only six open water dives so far, I'm not ready for that dark mysterious water just yet.