Remembering the Red Sea ​​​​​​​

LAWSON WOOD has just released a new guide to the Egyptian Red Sea, and here he reminisces about his long history with the region.

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I first dived the Red Sea back in 1974 with my very good friend Harry Simmonds on a marine biology course headed by Dr Paul Cragg (a contemporary of my good friend Professor David Bellamy). I had a loan of a Nikonos II underwater camera with no clue whatsoever on how it worked, but Jim Wilmot, Pete Bignel and

Kevin Cullimore soon set me straight. I had picked up a Nikonos guide book by Jim and Cathy Church to read on the plane to Eilat and took just three rolls of 35mm film on our two-week trip!

This first trip spurred me to start leading safaris through the Sinai Peninsula from Eilat in Israel (remember that the Sinai was controlled by Israel after the Six Day War in June 1967). These expeditionary safaris took in all of the Eastern Sinai Peninsula when there was no development whatsoever. There was only one hotel - the Marina Sharm Hotel - and only three dive businesses in Na’ama Bay. Red Sea Divers, run by Howard Rosenstein; Aquanaut, owned and operated by Rolf and Petra Schmidt; and Aquamarine, with Alain Sobol and Claude Antoine. There was no construction at all and hardly any roads, except for the main road from Eilat to Sharm, and a very poor track up to Suez via El Tur and on to Cairo.