The sharks arrived without any prior warning. We had expected
to meet them at this remote reef in the Red Sea and been impatiently
waiting for them to show-up. Unlike our previous encounters however,
it was not two or three that appeared cautiously to examine who
or what we were. Instead, at least twenty came swimming up current
like a pack of wolves heading for the bait we held in our hands.
Within seconds a pack of hungry, two-metre-long sharks, were excitedly
swimming around us and we felt that the situation was out of our
control. Terrified, I threw away my bait bag and pulled a knife
to protect myself. Ahead of me, I watched in horror as a larger
and agitated shark approach my diving colleague from behind. Before
I had time to warn him the shark darted around his legs, grabbed
the fish from his hands and disappeared beyond our visibility
range.
How had I ended up in this situation? As a fifteen year old boy
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
nobody ventured out over the Bank voluntarily.
With such a dearth of first-hand experience on which to base my
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
in high whistling sounds.
An hour later we noticed what seemed to be a line of bushes on
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
carried on grazing the algae, unperturbed by my presence.
As our boat gradually approached the shore we heard a big splash
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,
with an elegant flip of its wings, the manta turned away.
The next day we headed for Denham Reef, a mile from Hadara. Underwater
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
neon lights.
We were eager to meet the reef’s sharks and did not have to wait
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
shark, the most common species on central Red Sea reefs.
We soon learned that the only way we could attract the sharks
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
fish in half in seconds.
The months passed by and we spent all our free time diving. We
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
are fortunate enough to experience: to realise one’s boyhood dream.