Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic Google translation from a post originally written in French. My apologies for the weird sentences and the funny mistakes that could have been generated during the process. If you can read French, the original and correct version can be found here:
Français This is my last wonder underwater photographer: ships sunk in the Red Sea, colonized by coral and fish. Spectacular wreck dives in Egypt!
Diving on wrecks
They call Thistlegorm, Giannis D, Carnatic, Numidia. These are four impressive wrecks that I was able to photograph in october 2016 in Egyptian waters, in the Red Sea.
Some are quite old: the sinking of the Carnatic dates back to 1869 and that of Numidia to 1901. The most recent of the four is the Giannis D, a Greek bulk carrier that sank in 1983. The busiest of history is that of the Thistlegorm, sunk in 1941 by German bombers.
These are not my first wrecks, in my life as a diver, but they impressed me a lot, by their size (all around a hundred meters) and their beautiful state of conservation.
What level ? These four wrecks in the Red Sea are accessible by recreational diving, from level 2 (N2) or fromAdvanced Open Water (AOW), with a minimum experience of about 50 dives. The ideal is also to have a certification Nitrox (air enriched with oxygen) to maximize the time spent at the bottom.
How? I discovered these wrecks in diving cruise in october 2016, aboard theExocet. I really appreciated the organization, the comfort and the atmosphere on this boat. The cruise mixed divers photographers and freedivers. These four wrecks are "classics", on the program of most diving cruises organized in the Red Sea. Some may also be on day trips, such as the Thistlegorm from Hurghada or Sharm el-Sheikh.
Learn more. If you read English, you will find lots of information about the wrecks of the Red Sea and their history on this site: The Red Sea Wreck Project.
The wrecks are really not dives like the others. During the descent, the heart beats a little stronger, the eyes widen, the excitement is growing. And even if they are well-known sites, many immersed, already explored, the atmosphere is always shrouded in mystery, when is clarified, little by little, in the bluish fog of the water, the darker mass of a huge ship lying on the bottom ...
There is beauty and emotion in the spectacle offered by these immense structures abandoned at the bottom of the water, become artificial reefs that are appropriated by fish and coral. But even when time has passed, the feeling of being on the scene of a drama is always a little present.
"There are shipwrecks that are uncomfortable", recognize Jenny and Niko, our guides on theExocet. They think in particular of that of Salem Express (where we did not go), which has become a controversial dive site. This passenger ship sank in 1991 on a reef off Safaga, with on board hundreds of Egyptian pilgrims returning from Mecca. There were officially less than 700 passengers and crew on board, unofficially much more. The reports report about 470 deaths, but the toll is likely much heavier. Many bodies would still be at the bottom of the wreck, which is considered a sanctuary.
Regarding the four wrecks that I present to you below, the sinking of the Carnatic (1869) killed about thirty people and that of the Thistlegorm (1941) nine dead, but those of Numidia (1901) and Giannis D (1983) did not make any victims.
Thistlegorm
Type of ship: cargo ship of the British Merchant Marine. Length: 131m. Construction : 1940, in Sunderland (United Kingdom). Shipwreck: October 6, 1941, off the Sinai near Ras Mohamed. The ship, despite its anti-aircraft gun, was sunk by two German bombers. On his way to the Suez Canal and Alexandria (Egypt), he was transporting military equipment for the English troops in Africa: Bedford trucks, snowmobiles, motorcycles, machine guns, ammunition, two locomotives ... Depth: 30m at the sand, 15m for the tallest structures.
Of the four, it's probably my favorite wreck! It was Jacques-Yves Cousteau who first discovered and explored the Thistlegormin the 1950s. Today it is the most famous wreck of the Red Sea. We can enter and explore the holds, which are a real submarine museum of the Second World War ...
EDIT - July 2017: thanks to this wreck, I found myself in the newspaper The Parisian, who asked me to testify for a summer series! A copy of the page is to see here → The treasures of the abyss: touched, sunk. The internet version of the article is here → Diving: the wreck SS Thistlegorm, ship sunk in the Red Sea in 1941
We did two dives, but I did one or two more, as the wreck is large, there is so much to see, inside and out ... To visit without getting wet, I invite you to go see this awesome 3D presentation, which I found on my way back, doing research on the Thistlegorm.
Below, some of the photos I made during these truly spectacular dives ...
Giannis D
Type of ship: cargo bulk carrier Greek. Length: 99m. Construction : 1969, in Imabari, Japan. Launched as Shoyo Maruhe took the Markus in 1975 and then from Giannis D in 1980 when he resold the Greek shipping company Dumarc Shipping & Trading from Piraeus. Shipwreck: April 19, 1983. He sank right on the Abu Nuhas reef flat while the captain was sleeping ... The ship had left Rijeka in Yugoslavia (in what is now Croatia) and after crossing the Suez Canal was on its way to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, with a load of wood. Depth: 25 to 27m at the bottom, 5m at the top of the portico.
There are four wrecks on the Abu Nuhas Reef (including the Carnatic, which I present to you below). The wreck of Giannis D, broken in two (the stern slid along the reef years after the bow) is particularly "photogenic" from the outside and during my visit, visibility was excellent. I would have liked, here again, to be able to spend more time there and to make some additional dives ...
The outside has thrilled me, but the interior leaves me a more unpleasant impression. Nothing difficult in the penetration, but everything is inclined to 45 degrees, so that I almost dizzy at the edge of nausea, at times, with the desire to get out as soon as possible ... These corridors leaning are really troubling for the brain! It's a pretty unpleasant feeling, that many divers feel in this wreck. But the places are really amazing, with lots of details to watch, and I focused on the light effects.
Carnatic
Type of ship: British mixed transport vessel (goods and passengers), both steam and sail. Length: 90m. Construction : 1862, at Cubitt Town, near London. He was armed in 1863 by the company Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation. Shipwreck: September 13, 1869. Party of Suez (the Suez Canal will be inaugurated the following month), he was traveling to Bombay, India, with a cargo and on board 230 passengers and crew. He too was embedded on the reef ... (He's right next to Giannis D and there are two other wrecks nearby in Abu Nuhas, which means that the place is dangerous for navigation.) Depth: 27m at the bottom, 17m on the highest part.
The wreck of CarnaticAt first glance, it does not fill your eyes like the others. I found it particularly beautiful and moving. It is still there for almost a century and a half ...
The interior, with the blue light filtering through the metal skeleton of the concretion-covered hull and the thousands of ever-changing glass fishes, is magnificent!
Numidia
Type of ship: British cargo. Length: 137m. Construction : 1901, in Glasgow, Scotland, for the shipping company Anchor Line. Shipwreck: on the night of July 19-20, 1901, on the reef of Big Brother Island, reported by a lighthouse on his maiden voyage between Liverpool and Calcutta, India. He was carrying railway equipment. Depth: 15m for the debris of the front part closest to the surface and up to 80m for the stern, inaccessible in diving leisure.
The interesting part starts really only from 30-40 meters, so, it takes less time than the other wrecks (for non-divers: the deeper we go, the more air we consume and so the more we quickly empty his bottle). The Numidia has a massive, ghostly, quite impressive. To say that she has been there for more than a century ...
I did not take the time to sneak in with Jenny, our guide, and my partner Françoise, fascinated that I was by the profusion of corals outside! Magical.
But I'm a little hungry, not to have been able to linger any longer. We chose to go up along the reef of Big Brother, to make a little longer the dive, hoping to cross, to return, some long-legged sharks. The tek divers, equipped to push deeper exploration towards the stern, are fond of Numidia.
These famous wrecks of the Red Sea were all unpublished for me, who are more used to drag my fins in the waters of the Indo-Pacific zone. And there are many others, near which we went, and where we did not dive ...
The often excellent visibility of the Red Sea adds to the pleasure of discovery and underwater photography: you can really look at the wrecks, try to restore the atmosphere. I keep an amazed memory of these four wrecks!
And also… The wreck of Liberty in Bali (Indonesia) remains one of my favorite wrecks, on which I always have great pleasure to dive back, year after year. Recently, in 2015, I also dipped the wreck of a small plane during the Pacific War in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, and a long time ago, in 2003, I even plunged theAmoco Cadiz, in Brittany. And I also had the opportunity to explore many other wrecks, small and large, more or less spectacular, during my travels, in Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives ...
