Farasan Fantasy

I had read Cousteau’s account of diving on the Farasan Bank in

the Saudi Arabian Red Sea and had become fascinated with the area.

The ‘Bank’, is an extensive shoal of coral reefs that runs about

320 miles from west of the coastal town of Al Lith down to Kamaran

Island. It is a shallow area where extensive reefs have created

beautiful coral gardens. Cousteau, in his book The Living Sea,

describes this area as one of the most interesting coral ecosystems

in the world. It is isolated, surrounded by sea and desert and

relatively unaffected by tourists, fishing or pollution.When I

eventually came to work in Saudi Arabia, at Khamis Mushayt, in

1981, I enthusiastically packed my cases with diving equipment.

I was determined to explore the underwater world of the Farasan

Bank. To my surprise, when I enquired locally about the reefs

of the Farasan Bank I was met with many negative comments. Few

seemed to know anything about the area. A number of divers whom

I met told me there was nothing out there and they only dove the

shore reefs. Local fishermen told me the area comprised only desolated

islands with no fresh-water. Around them were seas full of dangerous

sharks that would regard me as a welcome change in their diet.

I was assured that they would swallow me immediately and that

plans it became clear that the only way to familiarise myself

with the offshore area of the Bank was by exploring it for myself.

With the aid of an English admiralty chart, drawn in 1918, I selected

an island that looked interesting, loaded two inflatables with

friends and diving equipment, plotted a compass course, and set

out towards the unknown. The sea was calm and the sun burned our

shoulders. This was July. The thermometer stood at 50°C and the

horizon shimmered in the rising heat. We had a spare engine and

lots of extra water and fuel with us and as we sped across the

calm sea with a cooling breeze in my face I was ecstatically contended.

This was what I had often dreamed of doing. Before long we were

rewarded with a taste of the richness of these waters as a school

of pilot whales changed course, heading straight for us and playing

with our boats. They swam up from behind, dove under a boat and

then jumped in front of it. All the time we could hear them communicating

the horizon. Through the heat haze it looked like a mirage but

soon materialised into an island surrounded by a reef. The shallow

water inside was an iridescent green and as soon as we reached

the reef-edge I could not resist the temptation to put on mask

and flippers for a quick look before going ashore. A fairy-tale

landscape of corals of all shapes extended before me. Magnificent

brightly coloured soft coral trees were surrounded by schools

of fish that swam among them in long flowing processions, like

streams of molten silver. Bright sunlight reflected from the fish,

forming a glittering curtain of light. Attracted by the activity,

schools of hunting jacks and barracudas approached, agilely turning

directly in front of me. As I descended a tunnel opened among

the shoaling fish and I found myself on the sea-bed. A large parrotfish

that I had disturbed swam away leaving a trail of pulverised coral.

A blue spotted stingray that had been lying on the sand followed

suit, disappearing in a cloud of sand. The smaller coral fish

behind us and a tall fin split the water, followed by a second,

parallel to the first. It was a manta ray, one of the largest

of the Red Sea’s fish that can grow up to five metres from wing

tip to wing tip and weigh several tons. We prepared our camera

equipment quickly and jumped into the water in order to photograph

these harmless plankton eaters. A large manta was heading my way;

it was an overwhelming sight, with slow graceful wing movements

it seemed like a giant bird, flying through the water. I was reminded

of pictures of the prehistoric pterodactyl. Its mouth was wide

open, funnelling plankton-laden water through the gills. In front

of the its cavernous gape was a school of pilot fish and on its

white belly were two sucker fish. It stopped just in front of

me. One eye seemed to gaze at me curiously for a moment and then,

the coral landscape was dominated by huge boulders of Porites

with massive table corals formed by branched Acropora and abundant

Millepora fire corals. A movement on thesea bed drew my attention

to two octopuses in an intimate embrace. The camera’s flash caused

them to suddenly change colour, becoming as white as snow. As

they moved away, their bodies continuously changed colours like

long for our first encounter. Diving along the outer reef of Hadara

I saw a streak of silver grey to one side of my clear vision.

Five reef sharks, about a metre and a half in length, circled

around us. They did not seem aggressive, only curious. I could

not help admiring their beautifully shaped bodies as they slowly

glided through the water in total harmony with their environment.

After satisfying their curiosity, they disappeared quickly. We

met them many times after that and lost our fear for them but

never our respect. At one time, outside Jabal Sabaya, they had

as usual come like a pack of watchdogs and then left. I was lying

on the bottom in shallow water using up the last frames of film.

I looked up and saw my diving colleague making gestures, pointing

at something behind my back. I turned around and confronted a

shark coming at me with a determined look in his eye. I triggered

the flash which deflected the the shark which merely scraped my

leg with his tail. As a souvenir I have a blurred close-up of

a shark’s jaws. Later we met several sharks that showed the same

nervous territorial aggressiveness so typical of the grey reef

long enough to get good pictures was to tempt them with fish bait.

Our first experiment had succeeded only too well as told in the

beginning of this article and now the situation was out of control.

We threw away the bags of fish as if they were live hand grenades.

With our backs to each other and holding knives in front of us,

we withdrew towards the reef wall and up to the surface. Fortunately

the sharks were attracted to the bags of bait not ourselves. In

later photography sessions we tied the bait to the coral and achieved

better control. Our close encounters showed us however that we

had underestimated their power. On one occasion we watched as

two sharks, with violent head sawing movements cut a three pound

became familiar with these little-known reefs and learned to recognise

the behaviour and habits of the fish. Our pictures also improved.

We felt like astronauts visiting another planet. The names Hadara,

Jabal Sabaya and Abu Latt became for us synonymous with adventure.

For me personally, Farasan means something that very few people