Author: Sebastiano Guido
The marseilles are sandy bays where rivers flow, always thirsty and only drink when the desert blooms…
As I set out in search of the Sirens, the verses of the Odyssey echo in my mind, in which the clever Ulysses has the sailors plug their ears and has himself tied to the ship.
Thus he will survive the dangerous lures of their fatal song.
Even without tying myself to a hull, a few days earlier I had tried to photograph a mermaid in Marsa Mubarak Bay, but I had given up on a tempting dive. At the end of the dive, the other participants had seen everything except the walruses, while I… I was swimming in a spot where something undefined had surfaced several times.
There was no sign of the mermaid. After half an hour of fruitless searching, a boat of German divers appeared, and the fatal enchantress, if she existed, had vanished into thin air, leaving me in the depths of despair.
A mermaid as imagined by the author
The result of the day was a few photos, not very clear, of guitarfish and of that black-spotted stingray that the English call coachwhip ray because of its long tail similar to a coachman's whip.
The guitarfish, which I still photograph today, is a very suspicious creature, with a flattened, diamond-shaped head. Its icy eyes follow me with a blank, poker-player stare. It doesn't want to be told anything.
Getting close to it requires patience, a good level of breath-holding, and above all, a cautious and indirect approach to get to the point where either you take the shot or, a second later, you can only see the tail and two small dorsal fins.
A Guitarfish while exploring the bottom
Today, from shore, as I scanned the Marsa Alam, two indistinct outcrops offshore reassured me. I sighted them, and with Elvira in tow to divert me from fatal temptations, my snorkel mask, and my trusty underwater camera, I began my long finning...
Here's someone busy grazing on seaweed on the sandy bottom. I dive in cautiously. The granddaughter of the Homeric creatures I approach has renounced her mythical hair,
he doesn't sing anymore and above all he has lost his figure.
In fact, when I approach, the being looks more like an old, bulimic aunt than a sinuous, charming creature. The voluptuous breasts have disappeared. A lustrous bald spot mourns the lost hair. The face is sparse.
Her fishtail remains unchanged, set horizontally. Her eye, sunken into her plump cheek, peers at me a little: it has a shy, flirtatious look, framed as it is by long lashes. She continues her feast undaunted and, piously like all respectable old aunts, she seasoned it in a Franciscan manner with sand from the seabed.
I carefully take greedy close-ups. It rises. Almost at the surface, it releases a puff of bubbles, its head emerges for a breath of air and sinks half a meter. It swirls the seaweed in its mouth and surfaces again.
She finishes her inhalation and descends blissfully, burying her snout in the delicious silt. Grazing, she continues to drift away toward depths that are increasingly difficult for those without breath-holds worthy of hers. I watch her vanish into the opalescent blue.
As I return, a green parrotfish greets me with a tuft of grass in its beak.
“Dear Siren, I hope that my race, which has always killed you, will begin to reconsider and protect you… Only then, one day, will your daughters return to singing with their hair in the wind…”
A dugong scratches on the sandy bottom
The dugong dugon is a mammal of the order Sirenidae with forelimbs modified into flippers, which are also used for movements such as bringing food to the mouth or holding the young on its belly when lying on the surface to nurse it.
It is probably this habit that created the myth of the mermaid who, with her breasts in the wind, charms the wandering sailor.
Shy like most herbivores, it's quite difficult to approach. The best approach is definitely freediving, due to the lack of bubbles that scare the animal.
The snout ends in a prehensile proboscis, surmounted by sealed nostrils, which it uses to tear off algae.
Often solitary, sometimes in pairs or with a cub, it spends its life feeding. It can reach 3 meters in length and weigh 300 kg.
Unfortunately, it is an endangered species even though it is protected by the Washington Treaty for the Protection of Species.
Two jacks (Gnathanodon speciosus) accompany a dugong to prey on the
small animals that it flushes out while grazing.
Greek legends speak of the Sirens, born from the blood of Achelous, god of rivers, but they are depicted as half woman and half bird.
A myth says that they died by throwing themselves into the sea.
It was Poseidon who called them back from Hades, transformed into fish-women.
Other myths present them as daughters of Oceanus and Amphitrite, who with their singing call sailors, causing them to be shipwrecked and perish on the rocks.
A dugong intent on feeding
The Guitarfish (Rhinobatos halavi) is a A cartilaginous fish related to rays and sharks, it swims close to sandy bottoms in constant search of hidden mollusks and crustaceans. It has a spade-shaped snout and a flattened thorax from which two large pelvic fins extend. Its main characteristics include two triangular dorsal fins that follow a series of short spines along the midline of its back. Equipped with electroreceptors sensitive to the electrical charges emitted by the movement of hidden prey,
It hunts them with its shovel-like snout and then feeds on them. It can reach 1,20 meters in length.
Close-up of the head of a guitarfish
The coachman's whiptail stingray Himantura uarnak is a cartilaginous fish equipped with the same type of electrosensitive receptors as all Rayiformes, allowing them to “see” their prey as if they had radar.
Brown in colour with dense black spots, sometimes joined in a network, it is not very common and reaches a length of 2 metres.
A spotted specimen seen from above
A Himantura uarnak swims towards the author
On the other hand, the blue-spotted stingray can easily be found in the Red Sea, although it is sometimes difficult to spot because it nestles under overhangs or coral reefs that provide protection from its enemies. For the same reasons, it often covers itself in sand, barely protruding from its eyes.
A Taeniura lymma grazes on the bottom in search of molluscs and crustaceans
As with all stingrays, the tail of these species is equipped with sharp spines which contain the venom glands in two grooves running along the spines.
In the event of a piercing, these spines usually remain embedded in the wound because they have serrations that make it difficult to extract them. If they are lost, new ones will grow on the fish's tail or, if broken, will reintegrate.
So be careful not to disturb these and other types of stingrays: you could be mistaken for predators, with very unpleasant consequences.
Turtles are common sightings in the area, even without diving. The most common and largest are the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), which can reach 140 centimeters in length.
Also quite common are hawksbill turtles, with their more raptor-like beaks, which do not exceed 90 centimetres.
They graze or lie quietly on the bottom, often asleep, and are unafraid of human proximity. This trusting meekness sometimes leads to inappropriate behavior, such as attempting to cling to their shells to be towed, which is strongly condemned. A well-deserved bite from their sharp beak could cause a significant wound (and would receive the full sympathy of this writer).
A green turtle of considerable size
Often, clinging to the shell of these shy animals, one or more remoras take advantage of their host to be transported effortlessly to new food sources. Moving slowly, without sudden movements, it's possible for some individuals to attach themselves (as has happened to this writer several times). The important thing is to avoid allowing them to adhere to bare skin, especially on areas with lesions or moles, to avoid developing sucker bruises or reopening wounds by peeling them off.
A green turtle half asleep on the bottom
Three remoras rest on the bottom cleaned by cleaner wrasses
Where the sandy bottom gives way to the coral reef, the water becomes less murky. Color explodes. Millions of organisms participate in the grand scene, each offering the observer a touch of vivid life. The warm-hued soft corals capture tiny creatures in their tentacles. It's a whole world where the hunter of the moment and the prey of this moment are one and the same, and where nothing is what it seems at first glance. But that's another story that perhaps I'll be able to tell in the future...
Useful information about Marsa Alam
260 km south of Hurghada, on a still largely untouched stretch of coast, a few dozen houses and a few small shops make up the town of Marsa Alam, where tourism is relatively unknown. About 130 km north lies the fishing town of El Quseir, and about halfway between the two is Marsa Alam Airport.
The area is frequented by a few vacationers who want to discover a new Red Sea, like Sharm 30 years ago, and who adapt to a slightly less mundane lifestyle than the more famous Egyptian resorts. The marsas are natural inlets where, during heavy rains, ghost streams flow into the sea. The seabed is sandy and covered in algae, and therefore has a different population than the surrounding coral reef. The water is generally more murky, but unusual encounters often occur there.
The area is quite windy due to the breezes that come from the desert.
The best time to visit is from April to October.
Average temperatures around 30 degrees with peaks of 35 in August.
Water temperature from 24 to 28 degrees depending on the period.
The seabed is mixed: reef and sand alternate, and the coast is usually made up of a coral reef often choked with silt. In some areas, access to deep water is problematic because there are few passages in the reef, which should be protected from vandalism and human neglect. Year after year, hotels and human settlements are increasing, and fortunately, they are being built.
Long jetties allow those who wish to reach the outer edge of the reef without damaging the coral. Unfortunately, as human activity progresses, human impact, even unintentionally, is causing marine life to decline.
Must-see dives include Elphinstone, a cigar-shaped coral spur emerging from the deep blue, with the top of the reef at almost 30 meters, where encounters with large pelagic fish (gray sharks and oceanic whitetip sharks) are almost a certainty, and Samadai, where the Dolphin House offers snorkelers easy opportunities to encounter striped dolphins, mammals of the dolphin family.
The author: Sebastiano Guido
Passionate about the sea since he was a boy, after years as a freediver he began scuba diving and underwater photography.
With tens of thousands of underwater photographs under his belt around the world and a keen interest in exploring his passions, he loves to constantly search for new species, particularly in the warm waters of the Indo-Pacific.
A diving instructor, he occasionally publishes photographs and articles in industry magazines. He has also published photographs in foreign press.
In 2013, his book “Dangerous Creatures of the Seas and Oceans – A Guide to Recognition and First Aid” was published and presented at the International Diving Show (EUDI-Show).
Reproduction of the text and images in this article, even partial, is strictly prohibited without the author's consent.
