Diving in sharm - Red sea fish

I just got back from a week diving in Egypt. Excluding the Egyptian men who are creepy and sleazy, the huge amount of mess everywhere and the constant reminder of how wrong a property boom can be by the half built buildings all around you Egypt is beautiful in a barren desolate kind of way.
Under the water however the story couldn't be more different. I did my training with a company called elite diving who I couldn't recommend any more highly. They are simply fantastic. We managed to do 3 dives a day for 5 days completing both our open water and our advanced. Ras Mohammed national park is up in the top 5 dive sites in the world, going to a place like this does however have one downfall. Now I will be totally underwhelmed when I go to places that are not so exquisite.

As I want to zoology at uni this post is going to go into more detail about some of fish I saw, not everybody's cup of tea I know but who cares.

Red toothed trigger fish

Some of the most common fish we saw were red toothed trigger fish, so named because of the distinctive fins and a red canine tooth. The trigger fish family can be incredibly aggressive especially when guarding their eggs. We also saw a small number of titan triggerfish whose territory extends in a cone shape above their nest. These are hugely territorial and if a diver swims over them they will attack you.

Titan trigger fish



Another very common fish, especially around during the boat dives, is the fusilier fish. When see in the day time these fish look very plain an quite mundane. This is due to the water removing much of the red light. The fusilier fish really come in to their own during the night. They are relatively sluggish letting you get closer to the shoal and when you shine a torch on them the reds and orange on their stomach show up. They also have a reflective blue strip on their flank which at night becomes almost a blue neon colour.

Blue striped fusilier fish

Another common fish is the parrot fish. These some of the most interesting fish around the red sea. It is more than likely that the sand you run your hand through whist at the bottom of the sea has been trough a parrot fish. These fish eat corral and as it moves through their system the indigestible matter is excreted as sand. These many parrot fish, a sub-set of the wrasse family, secrete a mucus layer around them in order to keep their sent from escaping as they sleep. This mucus layer is then re-ingested in the morning and used again in the night. Sadly due to parrot fish being disturbed as they sleep by divers many parrot fish have lost their mucus layer and are more vulnerable to predation.

parrot fish showing mucus layer

Parrot fish

And finally what diving trip would be complete with out the little nemo fish or anemone fish. These tiny fish about the size of a large middle finger rival the titan trigger fish for aggressiveness. They will quite happily take a nip of any part of your body. the humble Clown fish has a very interesting love life. All clown fish are born male and the most dominant fish becomes a female. Most clown fish pairs have 1 or 2 smaller males to ensure that should the dominant female die the new female will still have a mating pair.

Clown fish (note the larger female)

considering there are 1,100 species of fish in the red sea the above are just a few that especially caught my eye. We saw many others including a comb jelly. Any hoo i'm done rambling 'bout fish. Alex out.

 

Comb jelly (note the bioluminescence down the sides)